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Are the “Best Price” guarantees touted by Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz, Travelocity and other online travel websites something would-be travelers should count on? Maybe not, the Consumer Law team at Gilman Law LLP has recently filed a hotel room rate price-fixing lawsuit on behalf of angry consumers who’ve alleged that the online booking sites colluded with large hotel chains, including Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide, Intercontinental, and others to fix the prices of hotel rooms. According to these lawsuits, the pricing guarantees offered by the likes of Expedia, Priceline, Orbits and Travelocity are nothing more than illusions, and comparison shopping on these sites is a waste of time.

Travel Sites and Hotel Chains Accused of Price-Fixing Hotel Room Rates

The lawsuit filed by Gilman Law LLP names some of the biggest online booking sites now operating on the internet, including:

Hotel Room Price-Fixing Lawsuit

• Orbitz
• Expedia
• Hotels.com
• Travelocity
• Priceline
• Booking.com
• Sabre

The above sites are accused of scheming with large hotel chains to fix prices on lodgings across the country, including:

• Starwood Hotels & Resorts
• Marriott
• Hilton Worldwide
• Trump International Hotels
• Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group
• InterContinental Hotels Group

How Does the Alleged Hotel Room Price-Fixing Scheme Work?

As you have probably heard advertised on television, radio, or other media outlets, Expedia, Priceline, Travelocity, Hotels.com and many of their competitors promise to pass on supposed saving to their customers that they achieve by purchasing blocks of unsold hotel rooms. As a result, some consumers spend hours scouring the internet to compare hotel prices between these online booking sites. Because they’ve been able to convince consumers that they’re getting the best possible rates on hotel rooms, a growing number of bookings are now being done via these travel websites. This has made the hotel chains extremely dependent on Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, and others for their business. It’s that dependency that has led to price-fixing, according to plaintiffs.

The lawsuits accuse the travel websites of using their clout to induce the hotels to agree to set a minimum room rate that online travel websites could offer to consumers. Hotels agreed to the scheme because they didn’t want to loose the enormous amount of business brought in by the sites. As a result, consumers have been stuck paying artificially inflated prices when they book through travel websites.

Examples of Hotel Room Rate Price-Fixing

Some of the evidence presented in the lawsuits is extremely compelling. For example, one email between a booking website and a Radisson Hotels executive appears to show the hotel official attempting to enforce the alleged price-fixing agreement so all of their distribution channels offer the same price:

Legal Help for Victims of Hotel Room Rate Price-Fixing

Gilman Law LLP is urging consumers nationwide to contact our consumer lawyers if they purchased a hotel room from any of the chains named above through an online travel website. For a free lawsuit consultation, please contact the consumer protection lawyers at Gilman Law LLP today by filling out our Free Consultation Form online, or call Toll Free at 1-888-252-0048.