One of the world’s biggest tourist bus firms is facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit over alleged anti-competitive behaviour, including blocking customers of a rival tour buses operator from the Empire State Building and 9/11 memorial.
From its Victoria headquarters, the Big Bus Company, which is 15% owned by FTSE 250 giant and Legoland owner Merlin Entertainment, has grown into one of the world’s biggest sightseeing bus operators.
But a smaller rival in the US has filed court documents alleging it, alongside rival operator Gray Line, has “improperly prevented” Go New York Tours from selling its tickets via hotel concierges and colluded to stop some of NYC’s biggest tourism attractions from working with Go New York Tours’ multi-attraction pass.
The lawsuit claims Big Bus, which is majority owned by Soho-based, Quorn-owning private equity house Exponent, and Gray Line tried to “diminish the value and competitiveness of Go New York’s deals, where tourists buy one ticket to gain access to the hop-on, hop-off bus plus other attractions.
Go New York is pursuing the Big Bus company and Gray Line for “treble damages, costs of suit including reasonable attorney fees, and interest, to the fullest extent permitted by law”.
It claims it has “been shut out of the” Empire State Building Observatory due to its “exclusive relationship” with rivals. At the “Top of the Rock” observatory deck at the Rockefeller Center, staff allegedly “even told Go New York to talk to Gray Line’s president for help in gaining approval as a trade partner of Top of the Rock”.
Other major attractions where Go New York claims Big Bus or Gray Line, “working in some instances with each other and in other instances independently”, stopped it being able to sign up partners include the World Observatory at the World Trade Center, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the Merlin-owned Madame Tussauds and MoMA in midtown.
“Gray Line and Big Bus have conspired, either explicitly or implicitly, with these museums to reject Go New York,” the firm claims. Exponent and Merlin declined to comment.
