Europe's largest online travel company. Its subsidiary Opodo lists locations in occupied Palestinian and Syrian lands.
eDreams ODIGEO is a publicly-traded online travel company headquartered in Barcelona, Spain and incorporated in Luxembourg. With a 2018 revenue margin of $579, eDreams is one of the world’s largest online travel companies. Its subsidiaries and brands include Opodo, GO Voyages, Travellink, and Liligo.
The company’s flight and hotel booking subsidiary, Opodo Ltd, based in London, lists dozens of accommodation options located in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. As of February 2020, the company lists at least fourteen accommodation options listings in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and more than a dozen others in the occupied Syrian Golan. Opodo’s listings are based on those of Booking.com, according to an Amnesty International report.
eDreams’ actions violate several principles of international law. First, the company contributes to the illegal settlement economy by driving tourism and providing jobs and income, financing continued settlement existence and expansion, in violation of international law. Second, the company is involved in discrimination since West Bank Palestinians, unlike their Israeli neighbors or foreign tourists, cannot access the properties listed in settlements. The company’s involvement also raises concerns of pillage, as the company is gaining a portion of the rental fees without the freely given consent of the legal landowners. According to the international laws of belligerent occupation, an occupying power may appropriate property only for military necessity or for the exclusive benefit of the occupied population.
Both eDreams ODIGEO and its subsidiary Opodo were included in the 2020 U.N. database of companies doing business in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
- In November 2020, San Francsico State University's student government passed a resolution calling for the university to pull out of investments in companies that do business in Israeli settlements, referencing the 112 companies linked to the illegal settlements in Palestine as listed by the United Nations.
- In October 2020, Fresno State University’s student government voted in favor of a divestment resolution calling for the university to divest from the 112 companies linked to the illegal settlements in Palestine, as listed by the United Nations.