This one is interesting. I did a business exercise a few years ago where we had to figure out if gas stations posting their prices on the signs should count as collusion since their competitors can look and then adjust prices, and if that helps them raise prices and unofficially fix them as a group. This software reminds me of the same thing in that it's just a shortcut to looking at a bunch of price sheets.
The key here from an antitrust perspective is (1) the software is (relatively comprehensively) collecting rate information from the entire market
including non-public or difficult to discern information such as occupancy rates and (2) the software is making recommendations concerning rates that are
based upon that detailed information, so that there's an argument for coordinated activity amongst competitors, managed through a third party.
This is not merely an information service collecting publicly available information and making it available as a product. In the gas station example, all you have is better information concerning price. You don't know what their sales volume is and you have to analyze price yourself.
This is also not merely an algorithm which optimizes your own rates based upon your own non-public information, supplemented with publicly available information from others. The algorithm uses non-public (or difficult to discern) information from competitors to optimize your recommended rates. Sure, you might get occupancy information from public companies and REITs filing regulatory paperwork every quarter, but not month-to-month information from assets managed by private companies and hedge funds.
That's the difference.
