UK launches probe into data sharing

INTERNATIONAL REPORT — U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched an investigation into suspected sharing of competitively sensitive information among competing hotel chains — Hilton, IHG Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International — using the hotel data analytics tool STR, owned by CoStar.

The release said all four businesses are under investigation.

“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,” the CMA release stated. “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 behavior.”

The CMA said no assumptions should be made about whether any laws have been broken and said after the investigation, it may issue a statement of objections if it comes to the "provisional view that competition law has been infringed.”

A spokesperson for CoStar confirmed that its U.K. office is cooperating with the CMA in the investigation.

“We are happy to provide the CMA with assistance. We are surprised at the CMA's interest in a long-standing hotel data analytics and benchmarking platform, which for decades has been used by companies and government entities alike to better assess market dynamics,” according to the spokesperson.

U.K.-based IHG said Monday morning it had been notified of the investigation.

“IHG will cooperate fully with the CMA’s inquiries. The CMA noted that no assumptions should be made about whether competition law has been infringed. IHG will not be making any further comment at this time.”

Marriott and Hilton have not issued comments at this time.

In 2024, CoStar was sued in the U.S. in a proposed consumer class-action lawsuit accusing it and luxury hotel operators, including Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott, of conspiring to artificially inflate room rates. The suit sought damages for potentially hundreds of thousands of people who rented rooms from a defendant or alleged co-conspirator hotel from 2020-2024.

That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed by Seattle-based U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik because the consumers had not presented sufficient evidence to show that CoStar and hotel operators agreed to illegally share price information.