Growth revenues, but the platform fits and explodes the protest of employees. Meanwhile, over 10,000 hotels adhere to the European class action against the tariff equality clauses.
Italian Booking.com workers today are on strike. The protest is the response to the layoff plan announced by the Dutch reservations and travel platform, although the revenues are growing 8% in the first quarter 2025. Indicate number one behind the “cutting policy”? The artificial intelligence that advances. Meanwhile, hoteliers also protest, in fact adhesions to Europe to the class action against the company are growing.
Booking fires, despite the growth of revenues. The fault of artificial intelligence?
Today is the first national strike in the history of the company in Italy. At the base of the protest is the group’s decision to start a renovation plan which provides up to a thousand redundancies worldwide, including 9 layoffs at the Italian headquarters, where 150 employees work. The unions (Filcams Cgil, Fisascat Cisl and Uiltucs) denounce a “rigid and unacceptable” corporate behavior, which has seen the refusal of any alternative proposal (from the relocation plans to social safety nets) and even the unilateral claim to choose who to leave at home. The most affected part is the team that deals with the location and translation of content for the Italian market. Just the sector, the unions report, where the advance of artificial generative intelligence is recorded, capable of replacing workers, for decades in the company.
All this arrives in a moment of strong economic health for the company. Booking Holdings, the parent company, closed the first quarter of 2025 with growing revenues of 8% to 4.76 billion dollars and a profit for action jumped by 22%, touching 24.81 dollars.
The class action against Booking grows: over 10 thousand hotels rebel against the tariff equality clauses
And there is another front of struggle. The European class action of hoteliers against Booking.com is expanding, so much so that the deadline was extended to August 29. According to Federalberghi there are over 10 thousand hotels that have already joined the collective action against the clauses of the rate equality, deemed harmful to free competition. At the center of the class action are precisely the contractual clauses that for years have prevented hotels from offering tourists lower rates on their sites compared to those published on Booking.com. And the European Court of Justice last September 19, 2024 confirmed that it is an anti -acon -three year old practice. And so the doors were opened to the request for compensation for financial damage suffered by the hotels, many of which would have been forced to give up economic margins in order to remain visible on the portal. On the outcome of the class action, only the refund is not played, but a new overall renegotiation of the agreements between the platform and the tour operators, from today onwards.
