Hotel giants defend benchmarking in price-fixing suit

A group of high-end hotels have asked a U.S. judge to dismiss claims that they improperly shared data to keep room prices artificially high, calling the case "fanciful"

CoStar and six hotel operators including Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott said in their Seattle federal court filing on Friday that there was no evidence that they conspired to fix prices.

Key takeaways

• The consumer plaintiffs want to mimic a wave of antitrust lawsuits targeting "algorithmic pricing" as a newfangled form of price-fixing, but the CoStar data at the heart of the case involves "neither algorithms nor pricing recommendations;
• The lawsuit focused on CoStar’s Smith Travel Research (STR) reports, which advertise “performance benchmarking and comparative analytics” for the hotel industry;
• The complaint said the data reports "act as the essential 'fuel' propelling pricing algorithms towards the ultimate goal of charging higher prices."

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