On September 28, 2026, the European Commission published a Digital Markets Act (DMA) factsheet on Booking.com's compliance measures. Booking no longer uses prices offered outside its platform to decide whether a property can join its Booking Sponsored Benefit programme, and accommodation partners in the European Economic Area can set prices and conditions freely on and off Booking.com, including on their own websites. The change came out of a regulatory dialogue, not a fine.
For India, which has no DMA-style law, the episode is a useful test of an argument that has divided policymakers: can ex-ante rules change platform behaviour without the litigation and penalties that usually define competition enforcement?
The strongest case for ex-ante rules
The case for DMA-style regulation deserves a fair statement. Competition cases are slow. By the time an authority proves harm, the market may have tipped, and the penalty rarely restores the lost competition. A rule written in advance, with a regulator empowered to negotiate compliance, can fix conduct faster and more cheaply.
Booking is the example. The Commission designated Booking Holdings as a gatekeeper on 13 May 2024, and from 14 November 2024 Booking had to let hotels, car rentals and other providers offer better prices and conditions on other channels, including their own websites, and refrain from measures restricting that freedom, according to the Commission's DMA site. The Commission reserved the right to use "formal enforcement actions using the entire toolbox at its disposal" if Booking's measures fell short.
The Sponsored Benefit programme was where the dispute sat. Under it, Booking can cut the price a customer sees and absorb the difference, while the hotel still receives its own rate. Hotel groups argued in the DMA compliance workshop that practices like this could be a "measure with equivalent effect" to a banned parity clause, as a Kluwer Competition Law Blog account of the workshop records. The September 2026 outcome moved Booking's practice toward that reading without a penalty decision.
What India already knows about parity
India is not new to this problem. In October 2022 the Competition Commission of India (CCI) penalised MakeMyTrip-Goibibo and OYO a combined Rs 392.36 crore, finding among other things that the platforms imposed price parity on hotel partners, and ordering the removal of parity obligations, LiveLaw reported. That is India's ex-post model working as designed: a long investigation, a large fine, and years of appeals.
The comparison is not flattering to either side. The DMA route reached a behavioural change on a different platform without a fine, but it took about two years from designation to this outcome and depended on a regulator with a statutory mandate and a credible threat. The CCI route produced a binding order, but on a timetable that startups cannot plan around.
India's stalled bill
India's Standing Committee on Finance recommended in December 2022 that the country adopt a Digital Competition Act, identify Systemically Important Digital Intermediaries and evaluate competitive behaviour before markets are monopolised, as PRS Legislative Research summarises. The government then shelved the bill. Global Competition Review reported in August 2025 that the draft was withdrawn ahead of a market study on whether ex-ante regulation is necessary. MediaNama's coverage of the parliamentary report shows the Ministry of Corporate Affairs worried that thresholds could sweep in Indian companies not yet competitive globally, and wants to protect startups and MSMEs.
That caution is defensible. A rulebook copied wholesale from Brussels would burden Indian firms whose problem is not gatekeeping but scale. Thresholds matter more than slogans.
What the Booking episode suggests for Indian hotels and travel startups
Three lessons follow.
- Narrow, conduct-specific rules beat sprawling ones. The Booking outcome turned on one concrete practice: using off-platform prices to gate access to a programme. Indian policymakers can target comparable conduct, such as parity or parity-like clauses, without building a full gatekeeper regime.
- Dialogue only works when backed by a credible sanction. The Commission's stated willingness to open formal proceedings is what made a negotiated fix possible. An Indian approach that relies on voluntary engagement with no statutory consequence would likely produce only promises.
- Indian hotels benefit indirectly, but not automatically. The EEA changes apply to EEA partners. An Indian hotelier gains nothing in India unless the platform extends the practice voluntarily. Their leverage at home still comes from the CCI's 2022 precedent and any future rules.
On the other side of the ledger, platforms provide real value: demand aggregation, payment infrastructure and global reach that a small Indian guesthouse cannot replicate. Regulation that makes direct booking cheaper should not reduce the discoverability that lets small properties find customers in the first place.
A proportionate path
India should not rush to resurrect the 2024 draft. It should, however, finish the market study it promised, publish the findings, and use them to decide on a lighter instrument: a conduct code for a small number of clearly defined practices, applied to firms above high thresholds, enforced by the CCI with the power to accept binding commitments. Such a model would keep the speed of the Booking dialogue while preserving due process and avoiding the over-reach risks that stalled the original bill.
The evidence from Brussels is that regulation by conversation can work, but only when the regulator can credibly say what happens if the conversation fails. That is the part India has not yet legislated.