Agoda revamps sites after Singapore regulator expresses concerns

My Nguyen

20th Jun 2025

Accommodation booking platform Agoda has modified several design features after the platform was caught by Singapore’s competition regulator for publishing misleading information.

The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) flagged issues on Agoda’s Singapore website and mobile application, having previously raised concerns about accommodation information that it believed could potentially mislead local consumers.

Agoda has taken remedial action for five deceptive design features, including search results, Agoda’s preferred badge, results ranking, price labels, and booking countdown timers.

According to CCCS, Agoda has favoured and prioritised its partners’ presence on the platform’s search engine, including “Best Match” search results, ranking results, and labels. Those partners have boosted their business through Agoda’s partner program, paying Agoda fees.

Since Agoda has replaced “Best Match” with “Our Picks” to better indicate that the results are based on Agoda’s recommendations, and the company has also added an explanatory note for the search rankings and its “Agoda Preferred” badge to clearly disclose that these property recommendations are affected by other factors, including sponsorship by Agoda.

Agoda has removed the “Cheapest x-star stay” label from its platforms, as CCCC stated that the labelled accommodation may not be the cheapest option in real-time. The company has also changed its booking completion duration limit from five minutes to 20 minutes, addressing the CCCS’s concern about creating a false sense of urgency for customers’ final bookings.

The CCCS stated that essential and material information, particularly that relating to pricing, should be presented upfront and not be hidden in fine print, which may present misleading messages and manipulative user interfaces.