A US district court judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by consumers who claimed hotel and online travel agencies had conspired to prevent their clients to book rooms at lower prices. Defendants cited in the antitrust lawsuit included Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc and Expedia Inc, Bloomberg said.
The plaintiffs in the antitrust claim, who reportedly bought hotel rooms across the US, said that they have found companies had fixed prices in over a dozen consolidated cases. The defendants in the lawsuit had reportedly denied such claims.
According to the complaint filed on May 1 last year, the travel companies and hotels allegedly entered into agreements that will prevent the sale of room accommodations at further discounts than what hotels usually charge to participating travel agents. The complaint claimed that this tactic has forced prices of hotel rooms to artificially go up, and that the best-rate guarantees as advertised extensively were merely covers for the price-fixing.
The plaintiffs said in their July 1 motion, "There is nothing anticompetitive, much less unlawful, about a hotel setting specific pricing terms for its distributors so that it competes effectively with other hotels. Plaintiffs assert the novel proposition that a hotel must compete against itself."
US District Judge Jane J. Boyle based in Dallas dismissed the plaintiff's case yesterday, which was unfavorable to the plaintiffs, said Bloomberg. "The well-pled facts do not plausibly suggest that defendants entered into an industrywide conspiracy," Boyle added.
Boyle said that she rejected the three antitrust claims and a consumer protection claim of the plaintiffs as she said the bases of the claims did not hold water to the allegation that hotels and the companies named in the suit conspired to fix room prices, Bloomberg said. Boyle also underscored that the agreements entered by the defendants were individual efforts to ensure protection of their interests, and that such agreements were simply business practices long been exercised in the accommodation industry.
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