Booking.com introduces warning for listings in Occupied Palestinian Territories, rights groups says move insufficient; incl. co. response
Accommodation booking platform, Booking.com, introduced a warning to accompany listings on illegal Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land.
Palestinian NGO Al-Haq welcomed this move, but said more can be done to comply with UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and they highlighted the Guiding Principles' clause stating that businesses undertaking a human rights due diligence process alone should not mean they have done enough to uphold human rights. Human Rights Watch also stated that the steps taken by Booking.com to label rentals in the occupied territories do not go far enough to prevent the company contributing to rights abuses.
Notification in and of itself doesn’t end Booking’s contribution to serious rights abuses. The company should stop brokering rentals in illegal settlements in places like the occupied West Bank.Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director for Human Rights Watch
Business & human Rights Resource Centre invited booking.com to respond; their response can be read in full below.
In a subsequent email to us on 17 October 2022 Booking Holdings informed us that its warning banner "does not mention security or human rights" as was reported in the Haaretz and WAFA articles below.