Rate parity did not end. It split.

Picture two hotel owners reading the same news this autumn. One runs a small hotel in Athens, the other a hotel in Tel Aviv.

On 28 September 2026 the European Commission published a page on how businesses using Booking.com are now "free to set their prices on and off Booking.com".

Both owners have the same thought: at last, I can sell cheaper on my own website.

The owner in Athens is mostly right. The owner in Tel Aviv is mostly wrong. And both have forgotten Expedia.

I wanted to know exactly where the line runs, so I stopped reading headlines and opened the documents themselves: the contracts Booking.com and Expedia sign with hotels, their pages for partners, the Commission's page and a lawsuit filed against Expedia this month.

Athens: the freedom is real, on one platform

According to the Commission, Booking.com removed the equal-price requirement from its contracts in the European Economic Area back in July 2024. Its ranking and its partner programmes there had already stopped weighing a hotel's prices elsewhere, and from September 2026 the last piece followed: the discount Booking.com pays out of its own pocket no longer depends on them either.

Booking.com's terms for these countries say it in one line: the hotel does not have to give Booking.com the same or a better price. The only limit is fair play. The prices it loads on Booking.com must not be inflated, and nothing it does may be designed to ride on Booking.com's investment for free.

So the owner in Athens can sell on their website for less than on Booking.com. Only on Booking.com.

Tel Aviv: the headline does not apply

The owner in Tel Aviv cannot sell cheaper on her website than on Booking.com, and cannot add breakfast or a softer cancellation policy there either. Booking.com's terms, which I read on 12 October 2026, sort the world into three groups. In the European group there is no equal-price requirement at all. Israel sits in a middle group with the UK, Australia, Japan and Turkey, where the hotel's public website may not offer a lower price or better terms than Booking.com, and a guest booking directly on the hotel's website or app must not find a better price there.

Its terms say the default ranking itself does not look at outside prices. But the Preferred programme, which does lift a hotel in that ranking, checks in countries like Israel whether the price on Booking.com is competitive with the hotel's own website. And for hotels that use Booking.com's payment service, the discount it pays itself can kick in when the hotel's prices "aren't competitive".

Expedia did not leave

This is where my reading took a turn. I expected to find one Expedia contract. Its partner site serves many numbered versions of it, and I opened thirteen. Eleven of them still carry the clause: the price on Expedia must be "equal to or better than" the price on the hotel's own public website, and in two of those, on every other channel too. Several split the world into groups, and Israel sits in the same group as the European Economic Area and the UK. In those versions it is spelled "Isreal". In most versions, only Australia is exempt.

Which version a hotel signed, only its own contract shows. But in every version I read that has the clause, the answer for the owner in Athens is the same: cheaper than Booking.com, yes. Cheaper than Expedia, no, unless the law of their own country says otherwise.

Expedia's guide to visibility also lists "rate competitiveness" among the signals it uses to rank hotels, without saying what your rate is compared with. And on 2 October 2026, three guests filed a class action against Expedia in Seattle, claiming that its contract and its ranking keep hotels in the United States from being cheaper elsewhere. These are allegations, and the case has barely begun.

The guest who already knows you

In Israel, the UK and the EEA, these contracts apply to the price and terms the public can see. A private relationship you build with a guest yourself, they generally do not reach.

For the owner in Tel Aviv, and for anyone selling in the UK, that is the opening: a guest who has already stayed with you.

If that guest gave you their own contact details and agreed to hear from you, you can send them a better price by email or WhatsApp, and they book by phone or by email, not on your website.

The discount is on the room price only, not a free upgrade or late check-out, because several Expedia versions compare extras like those with every channel. And it is not advertised anywhere public.

Contact details and messages that came through Booking.com or Expedia are not for this: both forbid marketing to their guests without consent.

The same goes for a rate you give at the front desk or on the phone, as long as it is not published or advertised online.

The two Expedia versions that compare every channel do not leave this room, so check which one you signed.

For the owner in Athens, the website can be cheaper than Booking.com, but in most of the Expedia versions I read not cheaper than Expedia, and not on better terms. The same private route with returning guests works for them against Expedia too.

For both, the published terms may not be the contract you signed, and some countries' laws limit these clauses. Switzerland, for one, has treated platform terms with equal-price clauses as unfair competition since 1 December 2022. Before you change a price, read your own contract and check your country's law.

What the documents do not say

I read Expedia's guide, and it does not say what Expedia compares your rate with when it ranks you. I read Booking.com's terms, and they do not say how they treat an offer sent by email and then booked on your website. These are the two questions I would keep in mind.

Freedom is not profit

The freedom, where it exists, does not promise that a cheaper website price will make you money. A cheaper direct price is worth it only if it brings guests you would not have had otherwise. If it only discounts guests who would have booked with you anyway, it costs you. I wrote about that difference in Your direct guest is not your OTA guest.

Rate parity did not end. It split, by platform and by country, and the headline from Europe tells only one piece of it.