Class action suit alleges travel deal sites are price fixing A lawsuit, looking for class-action position, has been filed against some of the biggest travel deal sites of price fixing among other shenanigans. Travel deal sites generally offer affordable airfare and hotel rooms, but there are some who believe such online websites are not entirely on the level. Source for this article:
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Seeing price fixing among websites
To be able to keep the public from getting the best deals feasible, according to Daily Finance, some of the largest sites for travel deal and hotels are getting accused of price fixing. The lawsuit claimed that the websites are not offering the very best prices available as promised.
On the Huffington Post, you can see the lawsuit, and it talks about a ton of important companies such as Starwood Hotels, Marriott Hotels, Trump Hotels, Intercontinental Hotels, and Kimpton Hotels. It also names Travelocity, Hotels.com, Orbitz and Expedia in the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, price floors for what the hotels could offer third party vendors were set in price maintenance agreements.
Requiring costs to stay high
The hotels agree not to offer any room for less than they are selling them through the sites, which means that nobody can negotiate lower rates, even if they tried. The travel online websites are getting a minimum price for rooms this way.
It's not the first time such websites have been accused of being slightly devious. According to the Wall Street Journal, Orbitz was found to be giving higher price quotes to Mac users than PC users, as the company found through analytics that Mac customers tend to spend more on hotels, among other things.
SmartMoney explained that the sites tailor offers by zip code too, though there are cookies in every internet browser that looks to gain data about an individual to offer different ads. It is surely common to see tailored advertising.
Figuring out if it is a rip-off
CNBC’s Darren Booth explained that hotels negotiate prices but will not offer them for less than rivals the majority of the time. It is still cheaper to get a hotel through a site such as Travelocity than it would be to do it on your own. Whether or not the online websites are really hurting chances at getting good deals or not is still up for discussion.
Occasionally, according to USA Today, private sale online websites do offer better rates at times than typical discount travel online websites, but the difference is that they typically only sell hotel rooms and resort stays, instead of also offering airfare.
Sources
Daily Finance
Wall Street Journal
SmartMoney
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