Price parity in Switzerland: why it sabotages your direct bookings — and how to change that

For a good three years now, Swiss hotels have been allowed to offer lower prices on their own website than on Booking.com, Expedia and similar platforms. The law explicitly permits it. Yet a recent industry study shows that many businesses do not use this freedom at all — out of uncertainty, habit, or simply because no one has looked at the contract again. This is exactly what costs margin and direct bookings that would otherwise be within easy reach.

The problem in day-to-day hotel operations

Many hoteliers grew up with a rule that no longer exists today: the price on their own website was never allowed to be lower than on the booking platform. This so-called narrow price parity was imposed on hotels by contract for years. The habit has become deeply ingrained — even managers who have never read the contract again often still assume today that they must comply with it.

The result: the one lever that could make a hotel noticeably less dependent on OTA commissions — a small, clearly communicated price advantage on its own website — remains unused. Instead, the business continues to pay 12 to 25 percent commission on bookings that could just as easily have been made directly.

What the current study shows

The Distributionsstudie 2026 by HotellerieSuisse and the Institute of Tourism at HES-SO Valais-Wallis, published in May and based on a survey of 171 Swiss hotel businesses, paints a clear picture:

• Direct bookings remain the most important sales channel at 58.5 percent for the Swiss hotel industry — via phone, email, walk-in and the hotel's own website.
• The share of real-time direct bookings via the hotel's own website has risen from around 7.5 to 20.9 percent since 2015. Hotels that have invested in their booking engine and website are visibly benefiting.
• 46 percent of the hotels surveyed do not know whether their current OTA contracts still contain price parity clauses — even though such clauses have been prohibited by law in Switzerland since 1 December 2022 (Art. 8a UWG) and are therefore void.
• 29 percent of hotels report concrete interference with their direct prices — no longer through formal contract clauses, but through ranking mechanisms, visibility and the platforms' promotion programs.
• Around half of businesses were affected by price undercutting by platforms in 2025, compared with 40 percent the previous year — in 83 percent of cases without the hotel's consent.

The message is clear: the legal constraint is gone. What remains is a self-imposed restraint — and growing indirect pressure from the platforms, which for many businesses keeps voluntary price freedom from ever becoming a topic in the first place.

What does this mean for your hotel?

1. Check your contract before you keep guessing Almost every second Swiss business does not know exactly what is written in its own OTA contract. This is the first and simplest step: pull out the contract, look for the price parity clause. If you find one, it has been void since December 2022 anyway and can be ignored. Legal clarity costs one hour of effort — and removes the most common excuse for why your own website is not allowed to be cheaper.

2. Design your price advantage deliberately and visibly Doing away with price parity does not mean starting an open price war with Booking.com. A clearly communicated added value for direct bookings makes more sense: a small price advantage, free cancellation, breakfast included, or a local extra. What matters is that the guest actually sees this advantage on the booking page — not just in the internal price list.

3. Do not leave the visibility of your own website to chance A price advantage is worthless if no one finds it. If a guest searches specifically for your hotel's name, they quite often land first on an ad from the booking platform itself — not on your cheaper own page. Anyone who is more attractive in price on their own website must therefore also make sure that exactly these guests arrive there, and that the success of this measure can be measured. Without clean conversion tracking, it remains unclear whether the new price advantage is achieving anything at all — we show here how this can be implemented in practice.

Practical example (fictional)

A boutique hotel in the Bernese Oberland with 24 rooms had assumed for years that prices had to be identical across all channels — that was simply how it had always been handled. A contract review revealed that the original price parity clause had been void since 2022, and no one had ever checked.

The hotel then introduced a small, clearly visible direct-booking advantage — a 5 percent discount plus a local welcome gift — and placed the notice prominently on the homepage and in the booking process: "Guaranteed best price with us." At the same time, conversion tracking was reworked to make the effect on the direct booking rate measurable. Within a few months, the share of direct bookings rose noticeably, without visibility on the booking platforms suffering visibly.

Common mistakes

1. Never reviewed the OTA contract with an up-to-date check. Many businesses follow a clause that has long since ceased to apply — purely out of habit.
2. Letting fear of losing ranking paralyze you. Instead of making smart use of their own price advantage, businesses change nothing at all out of concern over losing visibility on the platform.
3. Not actively communicating the price advantage. A lower price that is nowhere visible — neither on the homepage nor in the booking engine — is of no use to any hotel.

Our conclusion

For over three years now, Swiss hotels have been free to set their own prices on their own website. What is missing for many businesses is not permission, but the use of this freedom. Anyone who checks their own OTA contract, creates a small, clearly communicated direct-booking advantage, and measures its effect properly, regains not only margin but also a degree of control over their own guest relationship. A good moment to critically reconsider your own pricing strategy — not because the law demands it, but because it pays off.

Sources:

• HotellerieSuisse / HES-SO Valais-Wallis: Distributionsstudie 2026 (May 2026)
• htr.ch: "Visibility is becoming the new currency in hotel distribution", 19.05.2026
• hotellerie-gastronomie.ch: "Booking platforms continue to put pressure on hotels", May 2026
• cash.ch: "Hotels increasingly suffering from price undercutting by platforms", 19.05.2026
• CORE Attorneys: "Prohibition of parity clauses in terms and conditions between online booking platforms and hotels" (Art. 8a UWG, in force since 1.12.2022)

More related articles:

• Why your hotel website will be your most important sales tool in 2026 (practical use of price freedom on your own website)
• Google is now tracking hotel prices (related price transparency topic)
• Booking.com overtakes Google (context: OTA dependency)