Booking.com Becomes “Gatekeeper”

Online travel marketplace, Booking.com, has been designated a ‘gatekeeper’ company by the EU under its new Digital Markets Act (DMA) competition law, meaning that Booking.com now has six months to comply. 

Gatekeepers? 

Under the EU’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), ‘gatekeepers’ are large digital platforms that play a pivotal role in the digital economy. They are judged as acting as intermediaries between businesses and users, i.e. controlling key ‘gateways’ through which businesses reach consumers. The DMA, which is aimed at tackling monopolising practices and ensuring fair and open digital markets, sets specific criteria to identify these gatekeepers and imposes obligations and prohibitions on them to prevent anti-competitive practices.