Competition Commission of India (CCI) has imposed penalties of Rs ₹392 crore on online travel firms MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and hospitality services provider OYO for unfair business practices. Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India filed the compliant with CCI alleging that MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, and OYO indulged in predatory pricing, exorbitant and unfair commissions, misrepresentation of information and arbitrarily levied service fees.
The regulator imposed a penalty of ₹223.48 crore on MakeMyTrip-Goibibo (MMT-Go) and ₹168.88 crore on OYO. The Commission observed, “Because of the commercial agreement between OYO and MMT, MMT gave preferential treatment to OYO on its portal, whereby the hotels of OYO were given preference and those of FabHotels and Treebo (its closest competitors) were being delisted.
The Commission opined that such an agreement between OYO and MMT to not list the closest competitors of OYO on its platform may foreclose an important channel of distribution and potentially contravene the provisions of Section 3(4) of the Act, given that MMT-Go was prima facie found to be a dominant player and OYO to be a significant player in their respective spheres.
