Booking currency markups: measuring FX conversion on travel booking pages

Site, product and step

Results, product page, basket or price summary: markups can differ by step.

Price in merchant currency

The base the conversion starts from.

Price in shopper currency

What the shopper is shown or charged.

Display vs charge currency

Whether the conversion is informational or the amount billed.

Implied rate

Shopper price divided by merchant price.

Reference rate and its timestamp

ECB euro reference rate used for comparison.

Markup percentage

Implied rate against reference rate.

Disclosure text

Whether and how the site states a markup or rate.

Exit country and site edition

The market that set the default currency.

1. 01

   Choose sites, offers and markets

   Pick the hotel, airline, rental and activity sites you audit, a fixed set of offers per site, and the shopper markets whose default currency differs from the merchant's.

2. 02

   Observe both currencies in one session

   On a sticky session from the shopper's market, record the offer as shown by default, then switch to the merchant currency and record it again. Stop at the last page before payment details.

   Implied rate and markup against the ECB reference16 linescopy

   def markup_pct(price_shopper: float, price_merchant: float,               ecb_merchant_per_eur: float, ecb_shopper_per_eur: float) -> float:    """Markup of the site's rate over the ECB cross rate, in percent.    ECB quotes are units of currency per 1 EUR, so the reference    shopper-per-merchant rate is the ratio of the two quotes.    """    implied = price_shopper / price_merchant    reference = ecb_shopper_per_eur / ecb_merchant_per_eur    return round((implied / reference - 1) * 100, 2)# Session: "http://USERNAME_pool-arcfast_country-de_session-k3f9a1x2_sesstime-10:PASSWORD@proxy.arcproxies.io:8000"# with the shopper market's country in place of _country-de.# A hotel charging in CHF, shown in GBP to a UK visitor:# markup_pct(price_shopper=212.40, price_merchant=230.00,#            ecb_merchant_per_eur=0.94, ecb_shopper_per_eur=0.84)

3. 03

   Attach the reference rate

   Load the ECB reference rates daily and join the latest rate published before each observation. For non-euro pairs, build the cross rate from the two euro rates.

4. 04

   Report per site and step

   Publish the markup distribution per site, market and booking step, with the disclosure text you saw. Mark observations where display and charge currency differ.

Prices are list prices in EUR, excl. VAT. Volume discounts apply automatically at checkout — full ladder on the pricing page.