The Federal Court of Australia has announced a fine of $ 32.91 million for the Trivago hotel booking site for misleading travelers about room rates.
According to Reuters.com, federal court judge Nathan Moszynski found that Trivago misrepresented hotel rooms as the cheapest available when he promoted paid advertisers. The initial violation of the Australian Consumer Protection Act was discovered in January 2020.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (ACCC) said the hotel booking site had misled customers by “using an algorithm that forced the highest-paying hotels to go higher and not set the cheapest prices for consumers”.
“The damage caused by Trivago’s violations was significant,” Moszynski wrote in the decision. “They arose from the fact that consumers booked a room due to not the cheapest offer at the top position, when they could book a room in the same hotel at a lower price.”
ACCC spokeswoman Gina Cass-Gottlieb said the hotel’s booking site had taken advantage of every traveler’s desire to save money, and a significant fine imposed on the company shows how seriously the courts have taken the case.
“Following the initial decision proposed by the new management on how the results of the comparison sites should reflect the recommendations in Australia, Trivago promptly made changes to its website to comply with the court’s decision,” a Trivago spokesman told Reuters.
Last year, Trivago launched the Events section in partnership with TUI Group, the world’s leading travel group. In this section, users will be able to find more than 55,000 events, tours, tours and more around the world, from the Colosseum to the Harry Potter studio and lunch on a double-decker bus.