UK Watchdog Launches Antitrust Probe Into Hotel Industry Data Sharing

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched an investigation into major hotel groups and CoStar’s STR for potential price-fixing through sensitive data exchange.

By: AXL Media

Published: Mar 4, 2026, 10:16 AM EST

Source: Bisnow

The Focus of the CMA Investigation

The investigation centers on the "exchange of competitively sensitive information" via STR, a global leader in hospitality benchmarking acquired by CoStar in 2019. While benchmarking is a standard practice in the industry, the CMA is concerned that the level of granularity and the frequency of data sharing among rival hotel chains may violate Chapter I of the Competition Act 1998. Specifically, the watchdog is looking for evidence that the data allowed hotels to coordinate pricing strategies or reduce uncertainty in the market, ultimately leading to higher prices for consumers.

Strategic Rationale: The Role of Benchmarking in Hospitality

For decades, STR has been the industry standard, allowing hotels to compare their performance against a "competitive set" of similar properties. Hotel operators argue that this data is essential for understanding market trends and making informed investment decisions. However, the CMA's intervention highlights a growing global scrutiny of "algorithmic price-fixing" and information-sharing platforms. From a regulatory perspective, there is a fine line between healthy market analysis and a "hub-and-spoke" information exchange where a third-party provider (the hub) facilitates collusion among competitors (the spokes).

Transformative Analysis: The End of Information Symmetry?

This probe represents a transformative moment for real estate data providers. If the CMA finds that STR’s current model facilitates anti-competitive behavior, it could force a radical redesign of how hospitality data is reported and accessed. This might include mandatory delays in data reporting (moving from real-time to historical-only) or higher levels of data aggregation to prevent the identification of specific competitors' pricing moves. For hoteliers, the loss of real-time benchmarking would fundamentally disrupt revenue management systems that have become reliant on high-frequency data to adjust rates dynamically.