In Business Travel News August 28 article “Hotel Companies’ Investment in Meetings Sourcing Platform Raises Antitrust Concerns,” AAI President Diana Moss details AAI’s concerns of collusion upon the news of Accor, Hilton, InterContinental Hotels Group and Marriott International pooling together $50 million to invest in meetings technology platform Groups360. From the article:
Though Groups360 has taken precautions to protect hotel companies’ sensitive data like pricing, concerns about rate collusion arise. “That dynamic can change significantly if the hotels are now invested or own a piece of the platform,” said American Antitrust Institute president Diana Moss. “If you have an ownership interest, you have a modicum of control over the decision-making of the platform. The antitrust concern then, potentially, is that the information can be transferred from owner to owner using the platform as a conduit, kind of as a pipeline, so information could essentially make its way back to Marriott or back to Hilton. And that information is potentially competitively sensitive.”
