It's interesting to claim that tourism in Europe won't be "durable" at a moment when tourism in the US is sharply declining..
Anyway, Booking.com is a European company and has many more customers than AirBnB.
Anyway, Booking.com is a European company and has many more customers than AirBnB.
Sorry to shatter your illusions, but for April 2025 (most recent month with final data) <https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2...>, Canadian visits are down 20% yoy but overall worldwide visits to US are up 1.3% yoy, including 17% yoy rise in Mexican visitors.
Full data <https://www.trade.gov/i-94-arrivals-program>
I am saying tourism is not something governments should want to heavily optimize an economy for. No amount of taking money from people on vacation will translate into building a more competitive or innovative economy.
Also, Booking.com is unbelievably exploitative and rife with dark patterns.
So it seems that Europeans have no issue doing the same thing as American tech companies?
The same cannot be said for AirBnB: if I go to the home page right now it lists a bunch of bookings for e.g. "€ 80 for 2 nights", while when I click through the total price is €160. So apparently what they meant is "€80 per night". I'd call that much more of a dark pattern than anything I've seen Booking do.
My parents ran a small motel - the only hotel for miles around. But on top of the fees, if they weren't paying for additional promotions Booking would find unrelated distant hotels even when searching in the area. People would sometimes mistakenly book for a motel states away.
But FWIW, the EU is at least making an effort to regulate the company: https://nltimes.nl/2024/09/19/eu-court-says-bookingcom-wrong... (which claims that Booking can no longer prevent hosts in the EU from offering lower prices elsewhere).