The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched an investigation into whether three major global hotel companies shared “competitively sensitive” information through their use of hotel data analytics platform STR.
The CMA said in a statement that it was investigating Marriott, Hilton and IHG Hotels & Resorts, alongside STR’s owner CoStar Group, as part of a probe into “suspected sharing” of sensitive information. The initial investigation is expected to run for six months until August.
“Companies use various types of data analytics tools and algorithms to help them make commercial decisions,” explained the CMA. “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 behavior.”
The CMA emphasized that “no assumptions should be made about whether the law has been broken” in this case but added that, following its investigation, it could decide to issue a “statement of objections if it comes to the provisional view that competition law has been infringed.”
A CoStar Group spokesperson told BTN Europe that its U.K. team was “cooperating fully” with the CMA and it was “happy to provide assistance” to the authority.
“We are surprised at the CMA’s interest in a longstanding hotel data analytics and benchmarking platform, that for decades has been used by companies and government entities alike to better assess market dynamics,” added the spokesperson in a statement.
IHG also said in a statement that it had been notified of the investigation and would “cooperate fully with the CMA’s inquiries.” BTN Europe has also approached Marriott and Hilton for comment on the announcement of the CMA’s investigation.
This isn’t the first time STR and owner CoStar have been accused of price collusion. STR, CoStar and six major hoteliers were the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. in February 2024.
The plaintiffs in that case alleged that STR and hoteliers Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Hilton, Accor, and Loews Hotels & Co. exchanged information that unlawfully reduced competition among luxury hotels in metropolitan markets across the U.S.
The lawsuit took aim at STR’s benchmarking reports, intended to assist hotels in comparing and analyzing property performance against competitors. To access these reports, hotel operators are expected to provide STR with historical room revenue data, profit and loss data and future bookings data. STR, however, said that it aggregates and anonymizes confidential data before sharing it with clients. Even if hotel operators were able to deanonymize this data, as one confidential witness in the lawsuit alleged, there was no proof that the data could reveal the actual prices charged for individual hotel rooms.
In August 2025, Seattle-based U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik dismissed the class-action suit, finding the plaintiffs hadn’t provided adequate evidence to prove STR and the hotel operators had agreed to share pricing information illegally.
This story originally appeared on BTN Europe.
This article originally appeared on BTN Europe.
