A lawsuit filed this month accuses Expedia Group of forcing millions of customers to pay significantly inflated prices for hotels, even if they’ve never used the booking giant’s platforms.
The suit, which is seeking class-action status, was filed Oct. 2 in the Western District of Washington. It claims Expedia violated federal antitrust laws by enforcing contracts that prevented hotels from offering lower rates via their own websites, loyalty portals or call centers. If a hotel offered a lower price on a competing platform, the suit claims Expedia would ensure the hotel was harder to find on the company’s platforms.
An Expedia spokesperson called the allegations “meritless,” saying the company has brought transparency, competitive offerings and better value to the world of travel shopping for more than 30 years.
Expedia charges hotels a commission, which is calculated into the price customers pay to book a room on its site. The lawsuit claims hotels were forced to inflate rates to match Expedia’s prices because of so-called parity clauses, which prevent hotels from offering better rates elsewhere, even when it is cheaper to sell rooms directly to the customer. This practice, the suit claims, inflated hotel prices across the board by 15 to 30 percent, an amount which corresponds to Expedia’s commission.
The lawsuit claims that Expedia’s dominance in the United States leaves hotels with little choice but to agree to the company’s terms. (Expedia leads the market for online travel agencies in the U.S., according to Phocuswright, a market research company.) The complaint covers all of Expedia’s brands, including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Orbitz and CheapTickets.
Eric Cramer, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs and chairman of the Philadelphia law firm Berger Montague, said in a statement that Expedia abused its dominance in the online travel agency market and imposed contracts that “contribute to the affordability crisis in this country.” Mr. Cramer represents three travelers from across the country who say they paid inflated prices on recent hotel stays.
Gary Leff, who has operated the travel website View From the Wing for nearly 25 years, expressed skepticism about the lawsuit’s claims. He said hotel chains undercut Expedia’s prices “all the time” through member rates that run about 2 percent lower than the Expedia rate. He called himself a “longtime critic of Expedia,” but said he doubted the company’s practices actually contributed to higher room prices.
“Their commissions are on a long-run downward trend, which is not what you’d expect from a business with monopoly pricing power,” Mr. Leff said.
In a 2025 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Expedia wrote that it faced increased competition from direct booking on travel suppliers’ websites. These direct channels can offer advantages to travelers, such as “specific loyalty programs, complimentary services such as Wi-Fi, and better pricing,” the filing said, noting that some hotel chains advertised lower rates than those available on third-party websites.
Expedia’s biggest competitor, Booking.com, recently faced legal disputes in Europe over similar pricing requirements.
In 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union found the clauses most likely reduced competition and were not “objectively necessary” to Booking.com’s viability. The same year, the European Commission designated Booking.com as a “gatekeeper” between consumers and businesses. This forced the company to allow hotels and other providers to offer better prices and conditions on other websites.
While Booking.com no longer uses parity clauses in Europe, it argued that the practice ensured consumers found a property’s best price.
In the S.E.C. filing, Expedia said it had previously faced investigations by various authorities regarding its parity clauses, and about how information is presented on its websites. In some cases, Expedia wrote, it had voluntarily addressed the authorities’ concerns.
The Expedia spokesperson declined to comment on the investigations cited in the 2025 S.E.C. filing. The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division did not respond to requests for comments.
In 2021, Expedia agreed to pay $2.1 million in legal fees and put in place new safeguards after a class-action lawsuit claimed the company falsely advertised nonpartnering hotels as “sold out.”
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