Booking.com: Growing, but losing the customer

Lunda Hotels Group is a privately owned European hotel chain that has grown steadily over the past decade by expanding across Southern and Central Europe. Operating in a fragmented, high fixed-cost industry, Lunda has increasingly relied on Booking.com to secure demand, improve occupancy, and accelerate the ramp-up of new properties. The strategy appears to work: revenues rise, hotels fill, and performance remains solid. Yet as Booking.com becomes central to how Lunda prices rooms, allocates visibility, and understands demand, the company?s direct relationship with customers gradually weakens. Decisions are increasingly shaped by rankings, dashboards, and comparative metrics the firm does not control. Nothing is obviously broken, but alternatives begin to look distant and costly. The case asks whether Lunda?s board should intervene while performance remains strong, or whether strategic dependence, once embedded, can still be reversed.