The lawsuit didn't identify the former employees. The court filing said two former Rainmaker employees told attorneys the company's products are used by 90% or 'just about every' property on the resort-lined Las Vegas Strip. 'In effect, the firms themselves don't directly share their pricing strategies,' she said, 'but that information still ends up in common hands, and that shared information is then used to maximize market-wide prices.' 'We even have an old-fashioned term for it,' Ohlhausen said, 'the hub-and-spoke conspiracy.' She said companies provide their pricing data to 'a common, outside agent' that uses the information to program its algorithm 'to maximize industrywide pricing.'

Ohlhausen defined a computer algorithm as a set of rules or instructions that can model thousands of 'extremely complex and nuanced behaviors' in a fraction of a second 'and react almost instantaneously to changes.' The lawsuit points to concerns about algorithmic pricing identified in a 2017 speech by Maureen Ohlhausen, a former acting chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission. 'But I can't imagine these companies talking to one another,' he said, 'and certainly not on price.'

'Then they can decide if they want to go above it, below it, or just ignore it.' 'Rest assured, they watch each other,' Feldman said. 'We intend to expose the under-the-table deals perpetrated by these Vegas hotels.' Algorithm to 'maximize pricing'Īlan Feldman, a longtime MGM Resorts executive who is now a fellow at the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said hotels, airlines and car rental companies monitor costs and prices throughout what he termed 'the travel ecosystem.'

'What happens in Vegas will no longer stay in Vegas,' Berman said. In a statement, plaintiffs' attorney Steve Berman invoked and reshaped a ubiquitous advertising campaign tagline introduced in early 2003.

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