EU Airlines, Hotels, Retailers Fear Google’s Search Changes

Lobbying groups representing airlines, hotels, and retailers have urged EU tech regulators to guarantee that Google considers their opinions, not only giant middlemen, when making modifications to comply with landmark digital legislation

As members, the Airlines for Europe group, which includes British Airways owner IAG (ICAG.L) and Air France KLM (AIRF.PA) (opens a new tab), hotel group Hotrec, European Hotel Forum, EuroCommerce, Ecommerce Europe, and Independent Retail Europe, expressed concern in March regarding the effects of the new regulations.

Aimed at giving consumers more options and competitors a better chance to compete, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) of the European Union (EU) imposes a list of dos and don’ts on Google and five other tech giants.

However, the groups have expressed concern that the changes could negatively impact their revenue.

In a joint letter dated May 22 to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager and EU industry chief Thierry Breton, they stated that their concerns have intensified since then.

“Our industries have serious concerns that currently considered solutions and requirements for implementing the DMA could further increase discrimination,” according to their report.

“Initial observations indicate that these changes risk severely depleting direct sales revenues of companies by giving more prominence to powerful online intermediaries due to the preferential treatment they would receive,” according to researchers.

A request for comment from the Commission, which is currently investigating Google for potential DMA violations, was not received immediately.

In a March blog post, Google stated that modifications to search results result in increased traffic for major intermediaries and aggregators but decreased traffic for hotels, airlines, merchants, and restaurants, but declined to comment at this time.

“We are concerned that the non-compliance investigation refers only to the need to treat third-party services in a fair and non-discriminatory manner, without any acknowledgment of European businesses that also offer their services on Google,” according to the organizations.