All-Inclusive Antitrust: Europe’s New Route to Merger Prohibition
Booking.com wanted to become a one-stop shop for a traveler’s entire journey. European regulators saw a different itinerary: a one-way trip to deeper dominance.
In a closely watched Sept. 9 judgment, the European Union’s General Court upheld the European Commission’s 2023 decision blocking Booking’s acquisition of Etraveli. The court agreed that adding Etraveli’s flight-booking business to Booking’s dominant hotel-booking platform would strengthen network effects and create a “connected trip” ecosystem that rivals would struggle to replicate. It reached that conclusion despite finding errors in some of the Commission’s market-share calculations.
At the heart of the case lies the business ecosystem—a cluster of interconnected products and services built around a common platform. Once largely a matter of competition-policy theory, ecosystems have now moved squarely into EU merger law.
The ruling matters well beyond online travel. Policymakers have invoked ecosystems to justify new theories of harm, changes to existing competition-law provisions, and entirely new regulatory regimes. Booking/ETraveli—widely regarded as the first merger prohibition based on an ecosystem theory of harm—now gives that campaign judicial backing.