Expedia / Hotels.com

Reasons to avoid

1. A federal judge refused to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit against Expedia in February 2024, ruling that Swiss hotel booking firm Amoma plausibly alleged Expedia violated the Sherman Act by using its Trivago subsidiary to manipulate search rankings and squeeze competitors out of the market. Amoma, which offered lower prices to consumers than rival platforms, went bankrupt and is seeking over $100 million in damages.bloomberglaw.com2024-02-02
2. Expedia and its subsidiaries faced investigations by the UK Competition and Markets Authority for presenting search results as objective when rankings were actually influenced by hotel payments, and for using misleading discount claims and false scarcity alerts. Expedia and Trivago each entered into undertakings to reform their practices, and Trivago was separately fined by an Australian federal court for the same conduct.globalcompetitionreview.com2023-02-20
3. An Australian federal court ordered Expedia's Trivago subsidiary to pay AU$44.7 million in penalties in April 2022 after finding it misled consumers by displaying hotel prices as the lowest available when results were actually ranked by advertiser payments, and by using deceptive strike-through pricing to exaggerate discounts. Trivago admitted it received approximately AU$58 million in cost-per-click fees from clicks on offers that were not the cheapest available, causing consumers to overpay.accc.gov.au2022-04-22
4. Over 100 local governments across the U.S. have filed lawsuits against Expedia and Hotels.com alleging systematic underpayment of hotel occupancy taxes by collecting taxes on a discounted wholesale rate rather than the full retail rate charged to consumers. Expedia has maintained a reserve of tens of millions of dollars for these tax liability claims while continuing to contest the suits.sec.gov2024-02-14