Expedia Group’s Trivago Fined $33 Million for Misleading Prices
An Australian court has handed out a big fine to Trivago, a unit of Expedia Group. Federal court Judge Nathan Moshinsky fined the online travel agency A$44.7 million ($32.91 million) for falsely representing hotel rooms as being the cheapest available when it was promoting rooms of paid advertisers.
The practice is a violation of the Australian Consumer Law, and was first found in January 2020.
“The loss or damage caused by Trivago’s contraventions was substantial. This arose from consumers making a booking in relation to a non-cheapest Top Position Offer when they could have booked a room at the same hotel at a cheaper price,” Federal Court Judge Nathan Moshinsky wrote in the judgment, as reported by Reuters.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission said that Trivago misled customers “by using an algorithm that pushed hotels paying the highest cost-per-click fee higher” and not highlighting the actual cheapest rates for customers.
“Following the initial judgement, which offered new guidance about how results of comparator websites should display recommendations in Australia, Trivago worked quickly to change its website so as to comply with the court’s decision,” the online hotel search platform told Reuters.
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