Second Hotel Price-Fixing Class Action Lawsuit Filed

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

UPDATE 1: Priceline, Expedia, Orbitz price-fixing class action lawsuits get MDL.

UPDATE 2: A federal judge dismissed the online hotel price-fixing class action lawsuit on Feb. 10, 2014.

Another hotel price-fixing class action lawsuit has been filed against a slew of online travel agencies and hotel chains, alleging the companies conspired with one another to fix the price of hotel rates sold online through sites like Orbitz, Expedia, Hotels.com, Travelocity and others. This alleged scheme allows the online travel retailers to “offer a near identical ‘best price’ guarantee – knowing it is the only price available even among competitors,” the class action lawsuit says.

Last week we reported that a hotel price-fixing class action lawsuit had been filed in California by an online discount travel company claiming the Defendants pushed it out of the market by imposing a “Mafia-style atmosphere” that forced it to stop discounting hotels on its site below the rate set by the Defendants’ alleged price-fixing scheme.

On Monday, a second class action lawsuit was filed by a consumer alleging nearly identical claims against the same Defendants:

Orbitz
Expedia
Hotels.com
Travelocity
Priceline
Booking.com
Sabre
Trump International Hotels
Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group
InterContinental Hotels Group
Hilton Worldwide
Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Marriott

Plaintiff James Smith alleges in the online travel agency antitrust class action lawsuit that he was unable to get the best deal for a hotel room through Expedia.com because of an alleged secret agreement between the hotel and Expedia that ensured customers do not pay less than a “guaranteed minimum mark-up.”

Smith adds that he was forced to pay “artificially inflated prices due to the conspiracy and has been damaged by the conduct” of the Defendants.

Included in the class action lawsuit is an email to a discount travel website from a senior executive at Radisson Hotels showing how hotels try to enforce the alleged scheme so that all travel sites offer the same price:

“Please REMOVE all Radisson Hotel product from your site as you are causing US online rate parity issues. We offer a best online rate guarantee … same room type should be same price across all online distribution.”

Another email from an executive at Starwood, which runs Le Meridian, Westin and Sheraton hotels, said:

“Should a wholesaler decide to sell the rooms on a room only basis, he has to make sure that the per contract agreed minimum mark-up is guaranteed.”

The consumer hotel price-fixing class action lawsuit is brought on behalf of all persons and entities in the U.S. who, from January 1, 2005 through the present, paid for a room at a Defendant Hotel reserved through one of the Online Travel Retailer Defendants. It is seeking damages and permanent injunctive relief.

A copy of the consumer Hotel Price-Fixing Class Action Lawsuit can be read here.

The case is James Smith v. Orbitz Worldwide, Inc., et al., Case No. 12-cv-3515, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas.