Martinez Travel Lawsuit Against Booking Holdings Inc.

The Martinez lawsuit against Booking Holdings was a 2020 consumer class action that accused Agoda, a Booking Holdings subsidiary, of tricking travelers with phantom discounts, fake countdown timers, and false “rooms left” warnings to push them into booking hotels at inflated prices. After nearly three years in federal court, a judge sent the dispute to private arbitration in February 2023, and the case was administratively closed in August 2024 with the arbitration award filed under seal.¹

What Martinez Alleged Agoda Did

Plaintiff David E. Martinez claimed Agoda’s website and app used three overlapping tactics to mislead shoppers.²

The first was phantom discounts. According to the complaint, Agoda listed inflated “original prices” next to slashed sale prices, even though the higher prices were rarely, if ever, charged in the ordinary course of business. The strikethrough was there to manufacture a sense of savings that did not exist.

The second was false urgency. The platform labeled certain rates with tags like “TODAY,” suggesting the deal would expire within hours, when in fact the same rate remained available well past the stated cutoff.

The third was false scarcity. Agoda displayed warnings such as “one room left” or “three rooms left” for properties whose actual inventory it did not track in real time. The complaint alleged that at larger hotels, direct calls confirmed plenty of rooms available despite the on-screen warnings.

Martinez argued the combined effect pushed consumers to pay more than they otherwise would have, including platform fees they could have avoided by booking directly with the hotel.

Where and When the Case Was Filed

Martinez filed the suit in June 2020 in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, against Booking Holdings, Inc., the parent company formerly known as The Priceline Group.³ The defendants removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in July 2020, where it was docketed as Case No. 3:20-cv-01289.¹

A second plaintiff, Tanya Salas, was later added, along with two additional defendants: Agoda Company Pte. Ltd. and Agoda International USA, LLC.¹

The Legal Claims and Proposed Class

The complaint brought six counts: violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code § 17200), the False Advertising Law (§ 17500), and § 17501 covering former-price advertising, plus breach of contract, breach of express warranty, and unjust enrichment.²

Martinez sought certification of a nationwide class of U.S. citizens who used Agoda’s website or app to book hotels, plus anyone who used the platform to book a U.S. hotel room. A California subclass tracked the same definition but was limited to California citizens and California hotels. Requested remedies included an injunction against the marketing practices, restitution, and disgorgement of profits.²

How the Court Ruled

In March 2022, the Agoda entities moved to compel arbitration and dismiss the Second Amended Complaint. Booking Holdings filed its own motion to dismiss and joined the arbitration request.¹

On February 27, 2023, Judge John A. Houston granted Booking Holdings’ motion to dismiss outright and granted in part and denied in part the Agoda defendants’ motion to compel arbitration.¹ The full order was not publicly available on the docket, so which specific claims were dismissed and which were sent to arbitration is not clear from the public record. What is clear is that the ruling ended the federal court track for the parent company and pushed at least part of the remaining dispute into private arbitration.

The arbitration clause came from Agoda’s terms of use, which require U.S. customers to submit platform-related disputes to binding arbitration and waive jury trial rights.⁴

What Happened in Arbitration

The rest of the case moved behind closed doors. On August 21, 2024, the plaintiffs filed a notice of a partial arbitration award with the court, but the substance was filed under seal after the defendants successfully moved to seal related documents in July and August 2024. One week later, on August 28, 2024, Judge Houston administratively closed the case.¹

No formal settlement agreement appears in the public docket. Because the arbitration award was sealed, whether Martinez and Salas recovered anything, and how much, is not publicly known.

Related Booking Holdings Cases

The Martinez case is separate from later actions against Booking Holdings, and the arbitration outcome does not carry over to them. In August 2023, Texas sued Booking Holdings under the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, alleging that its platforms used “drip pricing” to hide mandatory hotel fees until checkout by grouping them with taxes.⁵ That case settled in August 2025 for $9.5 million, with Booking Holdings agreeing to display hotel fees upfront across Booking.com, Priceline.com, and Kayak.com. The company did not admit wrongdoing and said it settled to avoid prolonged litigation.⁶ The Texas Attorney General called it the largest amount any state had recovered from a hotel company or online travel agency over junk fee practices.⁷

Abroad, Spain’s National Markets and Competition Commission fined Booking.com €413.24 million in 2024 for abusing its dominant market position with Spanish hotels between 2019 and mid-2024,⁸ and in 2025 more than 10,000 European hotels filed a class action in Amsterdam over “best price” parity clauses used across two decades.⁹

1
CourtListener. Martinez v. Booking Holdings, Inc.
2
Truthinadvertising.org. Martinez v. Booking Holdings Complaint
3
Truthinadvertising.org. Agoda Travel Website and App
4
Agoda. Terms of Use
5
Texas Attorney General. State v. Booking
6
Business Travel News. Booking Holdings Agrees to $9.5M Settlement in Texas Junk Fees Lawsuit
7
Texas Attorney General. Attorney General Ken Paxton Secures Historic $9.5 Million Settlement With Booking
8
CNMC. CNMC Sanctions Booking.com
9
The Guardian. Thousands of Hotels in Europe to Sue Booking.com Over Abusive Practices