The encyclopedia · Legal & Compliance · Legal decision · 2017–2022
India fined MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and OYO for locking hotels into one platform
India's CCI fined MakeMyTrip-Goibibo ₹223.5 crore and OYO ₹168.9 crore for parity clauses and a deal that delisted OYO's rivals.
MakeMyTrip · Goibibo · OYO · 2022-10-19
What happened
In October 2022 India's Competition Commission fined MakeMyTrip-Goibibo (MMT-Go) ₹223.48 crore and OYO (Oravel Stays) ₹168.88 crore — about ₹392 crore combined — for anti-competitive conduct in online hotel booking. The inquiry covered the period 2017 to 2020.
The CCI found MMT-Go held a dominant position in online intermediation for hotel booking in India. It imposed price and room-availability parity clauses on hotels, barring them from selling rooms more cheaply on any rival platform or their own site, and used exclusivity conditions that locked hotels in.
The regulator also found an anti-competitive arrangement with OYO under which MMT-Go delisted OYO's competitors from its portals in 2018. It said deep discounts and parity conditions created an ecosystem that reinforced MMT-Go's dominance and left little room for rival online travel agents.
MMT-Go was ordered to remove the price and availability parity obligations and the exclusivity terms, and to give hotels fair, transparent and non-discriminatory access to its platform. The regulator's order ran to 131 pages.
Why it happened
- A dominant platform that can set the parity terms controls not just its own price but every place the product can be sold — the hotel's own website included.
- A rival's customers are not won on merit when the incumbent's arrangement with a partner quietly removes the rival from the shelf.
The lesson
Parity clauses act like a toll road: a dominant platform sets the price everywhere a product appears and decides which rivals keep shelf space. A regulator willing to read one turns it into a bill.
Aftermath
The CCI's 131-page order directed MMT-Go to abandon the price and room-availability parity obligations and the exclusivity conditions, and to give hotels fair, transparent and non-discriminatory access to its platform. It also asked MMT-Go to make transparent disclosures about properties not available on its platform, whether delisted or out of quota. The case was one of the regulator's notable platform-market rulings, applying its analysis of multi-sided markets to online travel.
Sources
- CCI fines MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, OYO for anti-competitive conduct — Moneycontrol
- CCI imposes ₹392 cr fine on MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, OYO — Fortune India
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