Caesars, MGM and Other Las Vegas Hotels Deny Room-rate Price-fixing Conspiracy – Reuters

Caesars, MGM and other Las Vegas hotels deny room-rate price-fixing conspiracy

A group of companies operating prominent hotels on the Las Vegas strip on Monday asked a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by tourists accusing them of conspiring to keep room rental rates artificially high through a revenue management platform.

Lawyers for Caesars Entertainment Inc (CZR.O), Treasure Island LLC, Wynn Resorts Holdings LLC, MGM Resorts International (MGM.N) and other defendants said in a court filing that two tourists who filed the case in January did not show any direct or circumstantial evidence backing their allegation of a conspiracy.

“The complaint fails at the outset because it is missing every essential ingredient necessary to plead an antitrust conspiracy” under legal precedent, the attorneys said in a jointly submitted filing in Nevada federal court.

The plaintiffs alleged in the lawsuit that the hotels used shared pricing algorithms to set rates, instead of making “independent pricing and supply decisions.”

Hospitality industry tech company Cendyn Group LLC and subsidiary Rainmaker Group, which the lawsuit said provides the revenue management software products at issue, were also named defendants.

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