Amsterdam-based hotel booking website Booking.com will fall under European technology legislation developed to supervise companies said to have a gatekeeper function, the European Commission has confirmed.

The Digital Marketing Act or DMA applies to companies if they operate a so-called core platform service, such as a search engine or app store, have 45 million monthly active end users, have a “significant impact on the market” and a stable market position.

Booking, the commission said, “constitutes an important gateway between businesses and consumers. Its designation as a gateway company means “holidaymakers will start benefiting from more choice and hotels will have more business opportunities,” European competition chief Margrethe Vestager said. 

The move means Booking.com now has six months to comply with the requirements in the DMA which include “offering more choice and freedom to end users and fair access to business users.”

In March, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, together with 22 operating units, were deemed to have a gatekeeper function.