Booking Holdings Inc., which operates the website Booking.com, was sued by Texas for allegedly engaging in deceptive trade practices in citing hotel room prices.
Texas claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that in order to present falsely lower rates to prospective guests, the big travel reservations company leaves mandatory fees out of the prices it advertises. Booking Holdings runs five other consumer-facing brands, according to the suit: Priceline, Kayak, Agoda, Rentalcars and Opentable.
“For years, Booking has duped unsuspecting Texans who shop for room rates on its various websites by omitting mandatory fees from the advertised room rate,” the lawsuit reads. Texas alleges that practice “thwarts comparison shopping and, consequently, allows Booking to lure unwitting consumers with artificially low room prices.”
A representative of the company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
The suit includes images of Booking.com as a user searches for a hotel room in San Antonio. The website shows that the rate for a room at the JW Marriott Hill Country Resort & Spa is $409 on the search result page, but once the user clicks through to make a reservation, the rate jumps to just over $546. The increase is due to a mandatory $56 fee charged by the hotel, plus $81 in taxes.
Texas claims that the practice benefits the company, which allegedly “retains a percentage of the total amount charged on mandatory fees.”
The case is Texas v. Booking Holdings, 2023CI16493, Bexar County District Court (166th District).
--With assistance from Natalie Lung.
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