CMA launches investigation into hotel chains

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched an investigation into suspected sharing of competitively sensitive information among competing hotel chains – Hilton, IHG Hotels and Marriott – using the hotel data analytics tool STR, owned by CoStar. All four businesses are under investigation.

The CMA said: "Companies use various types of data analytics tools and algorithms to help them make commercial decisions. This can bring benefits including more intense competition, lower costs, and faster changes in prices to better match demand and supply in markets.  

"However, when rival businesses share competitively sensitive information – including through a third-party data analytics provider – this reduces the uncertainty competing businesses normally have about how each other will act. This can affect how strongly companies compete because it makes it easier for them to predict what each other will do and coordinate their behaviour. 

"At this stage, no assumptions should be made about whether the law has been broken. Following a period of investigation and information gathering, the CMA may issue a statement of objections if it comes to the provisional view that competition law has been infringed."

None of the companies involved had commened at the time of writing.