Chief US District Judge Miranda Du has dismissed a proposed class action against some of Las Vegas’ hotels.
Hotel operators such as MGM Resorts, Wynn Resorts, Treasure Island and Caesars Entertainment were accused of conspiring to overcharge for room rates in violation of US antitrust law.
The lawsuit sought to receive class action for those people who had rented a room since 2019 at any of the hotels along the famous Las Vegas Strip.
The main complaint referred to how the operators fix their prices, claiming that they used shared data that they gathered from Rainmaker, a Cendyn subsidiary, with the lawsuit claiming that the subsidiary “collects confidential price information from each of the hotel operators, and then tells them, through use of various algorithms, how to price.” Cendyn is a revenue management software developer for the hospitality industry.
Du dismissed the proposed class action, saying in a 13-page order that the lawsuit against the hotel operators suffered from “ambiguity” and “numerous deficiencies.” Du also said that “the court therefore cannot say which pricing algorithms each hotel operator uses, making it impossible to infer that all hotel operators agreed to use the same ones,” explaining that the complaint also failed to allege that the hotel operators are "required" to accept prices that the Rainmaker software recommends.
The Chief US District Judge said, however, that the plaintiffs could file an amended lawsuit within 30 days, with the plaintiffs’ attorney, Steve Berman, saying they intended to file an amended complaint and “are confident we can address the court’s concerns.”
In the last few months, one act that has been proposed, in regards to hotel prices, is the Hotel Fees Transparency Act, which would seek to establish federal pricing guidelines for hotels.
