Fall is shoulder season for Alaska, Mexico, and the Caribbean—and for fall cruises, that means emptier ships which allow booking windows to stay open longer. In other words, now is a great time to snag a last-minute sailing.
23.09.2023 - 12:03 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal / European Commission
The European Commission has all but officially blocked Booking Holding’s almost 2-year-old pending acquisition of Swedish flight-tech company eTraveli Group, and Booking confidentially sent a memo to national competition authorities detailing why it thinks the commission’s arguments are flawed.
Skift obtained the confidential document dated September 8. The commission’s official decision on whether to block the acquisition is slated to be made before the end of the month.
“Despite strongly disagreeing with the EC’s case and the selective and misleading use of facts, the Parties submitted an effective and transformational quasi-structural remedy to address the EC’s Theory of Harm,” and then enhanced it based on feedback, the document said.
A spokesperson for the commission declined to comment for this story.
On August 31, the commission’s Department of Competition communicated to Booking and eTraveli Group that it would recommend that the deal be blocked.
Booking is pursuing the acquisition primarily for how it might benefit its fledgling flights business. One of the commission’s main arguments is that the deal would increase Booking.com’s hotel market share in Europe.
The commission’s theory is that Booking.com’s flights customers would book more hotels from the company when presented with that option.
Booking.com proposed a remedy: It would display a carousel on its web pages and apps with hotel offers from rival online travel agencies, including smaller ones.
It would be a “non-divestiture” remedy because Booking.com wouldn’t have to sell one of its brands like Kayak, for example. Booking.com argued it was aligned with the commission’s non-divestiture remedies in the Microsoft-Activision case.
In the document sent to national competition authorities in Europe, Booking argued that the proposed remedy would “have a transformational effect on competition in the sector,” a statement that is — at best — debatable.
Booking said decision to block eTraveli deal would leave its competitors without the option to use its own platform to market hotels to Booking’s customers “and without access to this pro-competitive remedy.”
In other objections to the commission’s reasoning, Booking said in the document:
This plea to the European Union’s competition authorities is unlikely to sway the decision to block the deal.
A Booking Holdings spokesperson said that if the commission does block the acquisition, the company would mount a legal challenge. Either way, the company is committed to building its flights business.
Fall is shoulder season for Alaska, Mexico, and the Caribbean—and for fall cruises, that means emptier ships which allow booking windows to stay open longer. In other words, now is a great time to snag a last-minute sailing.
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Booking Holdings has viewed its planned $1.7 billion acquisition of Swedish-based company eTraveli Group as a coup in its attempts to boost its flight business. However, the European Commission has blocked the deal, arguing that the deal would increase Booking.com’s hotel market share in Europe.
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Low-cost airline Breeze Airways is continuing to expand with a new flight from New York to Florida in time for a warm-weather winter escape.
eTraveli Group was left at the altar last week when the European Commission blocked its acquisition by Booking Holdings on antitrust grounds. Booking is appealing, but eTraveli CEO Mathias Hedlund said the $1.8 billion deal would be “no longer in play.” “We are a bigger fish now than we were at the time,” Hedlund said in an exclusive interview with Skift, referring to when the company signed the merger deal in November 2021. He said eTraveli is 2.4 times larger than before the pandemic.
A burger and fries by the beach in San Diego, California. (Photo Credit: sophia_ross/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus)