Booking.com Issue for Small Businesses in Turkey

Abstract

Purpose – Established in Amsterdam in 1996, Booking.com has become one of the world's largesttravel e-commerce companies from a small Dutch venture. Booking.com offers its users access tomany accommodation facilities around the world. In this respect, the small accommodation facilitiesin many parts of the world which registered to the booking.com system and have the opportunityto reach the consumer on the other side of the world.Design/methodology/approach – Çeşme i s a small p rovince o f İ zmir, w hich i s f amous f or itswindsurf center, lodgings, and boutique hotels. These small hotels give services with few rooms ina warm atmosphere. Remarkably most of the owner/business exploiter of these small hotels doesthe most of the work of his/her hotels. Moreover, also they are the travel agency of themselves andhad been using Booking.com.Findings – However, it was restricted to use Booking.com in domestic reservations on 30 March2017 in Turkey. Due to the restriction of Booking.com in Turkey, many small businesses have beenadversely affected by this situation. This restriction has put these businesses into trouble in terms ofmarketing, especially since the service providers that are equivalent to the services provided byBooking.com are not fully efficient at that time.Discussion – This study aims to reveal the effects of booking.com restriction in Turkey,Çeşme/Alaçatı via interview method. In this study, it was interviewed with 12 hotel owner/businessexploiter in Çeşme/Alaçatı in 2017 and 2018 to reveal the problems of Booking.com’s domesticrestriction. It has seen that Booking.com restriction has various adverse effects on small businessesin Çeşme/Alaçatı.