EU COMPETITION LAW AND POLICY IN THE TOURISM SECTOR 43 commercial affiliate programmes and B2C, excluding commercial affiliate programmes. The latter are services provided by MSSs and/or OTAs to third party websites that wish to generate revenue by driving traffic to the affiliated MSS or OTA. In its decisions, the Commission has left open whether commercial affiliate programmes do, in fact, constitute a distinct market113. 3.2. Relevant geographic market In relation to the hotel accommodation services, the Commission left open the exact delineation of the geographic market but pointed to the possibility of city- -wide markets or markets covering a broader resort area114, for instance. As for the hotel management services and the hotel franchising services, the Commission indicated that the market is likely to be at least EEA-wide and possibly worldwide115. Generally speaking, geographic markets for the distribution of travel services are national116. National competition authorities have come to the same conclusion, even for MSS and OTA services117, but this issue was eventually left open by the Commission118. Charter airline services can also be considered to have a national character, as they fly out of and return to their country of origin. In addition, licensing and the demand for these services arises mainly from customers resident in the country of origin. Practical barriers such as language, lack of information provided by foreign actors, contractual legal complications under international private law and the burden of travelling to another country for point of departure further amplify this point119. Nevertheless, in some cases, a regional geographic market was put into consideration. These examples can be found mainly in the market of package holidays, where the willingness of the customers to travel a certain distance to book their travel product is taken into account and the same holds true for the 113 Case M. 8416 – Priceline/Momondo, para. 57. 114 Case M.7902 – Marriott/Starwood, paras. 119 and 178. 115 Ibid. para. 149. 116 Case COMP/M.2691 TUI/Nouvelles Frontieres (2002), para. 8; M. 8416 – Priceline/Momondo (2017), para. 59. See also: Cases M.8046 – TUI/Transat, para. 104 and following. M.6163 – AXA/Permira/OPODO/Go Voyages/Edreams, para. 29 and following. 117 Case M. 8416 – Priceline/Momondo, para. 60. See also: the German National Competition Authority, decisions of 20 December 2013 and 23 December 2015 addressed to HRS and Booking.com, respectively; French, Italian and Swedish national competition authorities, decisions of 15-21 April 2015 addressed to Booking.com. 118 M. 8416 – Priceline/Momondo (2017), recitals 68 and 69. 119 Case M. 1524 Airtours/First Choice, paras. 43-44; decision annulled by the Court of First Instance in Judgment of 6 June 2002, T-342/99, Airtours plc v Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2002:146).
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