(The Center Square) – The Office of the Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Booking Holdings Inc., a major travel reservation company, for falsely marketing hotel rooms at prices that were not available to the public as advertised.
Booking’s misleading and deceptive practices allegedly violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Across its sites, Booking omitted mandatory fees from its initially advertised room rates. Booking also misled consumers by grouping and obscuring the mandatory fees with funds owed to the government as a component of the “Taxes and Fees” line item at checkout, according to an Aug. 10 news release.
“Further, Booking’s actions put its honest competitors, who transparently display up-front the total price, at a disadvantage, causing many of them to lose customers to Booking,” according to the news release.
Booking operates nationwide under websites such as Booking.com, Priceline.com, and Kayak.com.
“For years, Booking has duped unsuspecting Texans who shop for room rates on its various websites by omitting mandatory fees from the advertised room rate,” according to the lawsuit. “Booking’s failure to include these mandatory fees in its initial advertisement of room rates thwarts comparison shopping and, consequently, allows Booking to lure unwitting consumers with artificially low room prices that are unavailable at the rates advertised.”
In May, former Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Hyatt Hotels for deceptive trade practices.
Earlier this year, the OAG filed lawsuits against hotel companies deceiving customers about the price of rooms through falsely marketed prices.
