> Paying booking.com to allow your results to appear higher is not.

But booking takes a cut of the booking in all scenarios, so they’re already incentivized to prioritize results that result in more profit for them. This all gets very tricky unfortunately.

Yes, but that is different.

Scenario A: Booking.com wants to increase their profits so they analyze their results and prioritize the best ones to reach their target. Regardless, Booking takes a cut of everything.

Scenario B: if you pay Booking $10k you can get to the first page even if you are a random 1-star hotel. Booking takes a cut of everything and also profits by getting money in exchange for more visibility of certain results.