The European Commission has approved unconditionally under the EU Merger Regulation the acquisition of Momondo Group by Priceline Group, both active in the online travel sector.
Priceline Group, from the US, supplies services in 224 countries and territories in Europe, North America, South America, the Asia-Pacific region, Middle East and Africa.
Momondo Group, from the UK, provides services in the online travel sector in 35 international markets with a focus on the Nordic region.
Momondo announced the merger last 8th February and the transaction was notified to the EU Commission on 12th June this same year.
The Commission assessed the impact of the proposed transaction on markets for the operation of metasearch sites in the European Economic Area (EEA).
Metasearch sites, on the one hand allow travellers to search for and compare travel products. On the other, they offer advertising services to online travel agents and travel service providers, such as airlines, hotel operators, and car rental companies.
The Commission also examined a number of vertical relationships arising from the merging companies’ activities in the operation of metasearch sites and their activities in operating online travel agents downstream.
The EU Commission estated that metasearch activities are largely geographically complementary.Besides, The merged entity will be competing with several other global meta search operators, such as Skyscanner, Trivago, TripAdvisor, Google (through Google Hotels and Google flights), as well as by operators of smaller, regional or national, meta search sites.
The Commission therefore concluded that the proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns on any of the markets examined.
Image over the headline.- © Momondo.
