OYO Las Vegas Admits It Was Behind Fake ‘Palette’ and ‘Collection O’ Hotel Listings

A Las Vegas hotel just off the Strip has admitted it was behind a set of fake room listings that tricked travelers into thinking they were booking a completely different, more upscale property. OYO Hotel and Casino Las Vegas, the former Hooters Hotel located at 115 East Tropicana Avenue, confirmed that it was responsible for the phantom “Palette” and “Collection O” listings that appeared on major booking sites over the past week.

The listings, first flagged by Vegas influencers, showed up on platforms including Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Trip.com. Both fake hotels used addresses just steps from the real OYO and leaned on digitally altered photos, including exterior shots swapped with images of the Las Vegas Convention Center and Fremont Street, along with room photos doctored with AI-generated touches like unnaturally glossy candles and upgraded-looking fixtures that don’t actually exist at the property.

How the Fake Listings Were Built

Collection O’s listing reportedly included a doctored photo of the actual OYO front desk with the signage behind it edited to read “Collection Signature Stays by OYO.” Booking platforms compounded the confusion by describing the properties as separate establishments in their own copy — Expedia listed Palette as a small standalone hotel with the real OYO merely “steps” away, while Hotels.com claimed Collection O had no casino and pointed to OYO’s gaming floor as a three-minute walk from the front door. Neither description was accurate; both addresses point to the exact same building.

Neither Palette nor Collection O ever existed as functioning hotels. Guests who booked rooms under those names were directed to the real OYO address, leaving many baffled that their reserved hotel simply didn’t exist at the site, which sits near the ongoing construction of the Athletics’ new ballpark just off the southern end of the Strip. Reviews for the fake listings quickly reflected the confusion. Palette reportedly carried a 2.0-out-of-10 score on Expedia from an early verified review describing broken elevators that stranded guests without staff assistance, while Collection O sat around 4.0 out of 10 from roughly 15 reviews, the majority of which were harshly critical.

Prism’s Explanation and the Fallout

Prism, the India-based hospitality company that owns OYO, told SFGATE the listings were indeed posted for the property but were pushed live “while the related renovations and signage at the property were still being completed.” Communications lead Anupriya Malik said the company “urgently reviewed how this happened” and has taken steps to correct the listings so they only reappear once renovations are finished. The explanation stops short of addressing why the listings used entirely fabricated hotel names and AI-altered imagery rather than simply marketing the property under its existing OYO branding during renovations.

Booking.com and Expedia both confirmed they launched internal investigations and suspended the listings shortly after the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Vegas influencers brought the discrepancy to public attention. A Booking.com spokesperson acknowledged that “bad actors continue to develop increasingly sophisticated tactics” in a statement to the outlet, language that suggests the platform initially treated the listings as a potential third-party fraud case rather than an in-house rebranding effort by the hotel operator itself.

What Happens Next

Since the story broke, OYO has pulled both fake properties from its own booking system, and Expedia has marked the Collection O listing as closed through August 2028, effectively cutting off future bookings under that name. Expedia’s Canadian site reportedly still showed the Palette listing days later, though without any bookable inventory attached, and both names reportedly lingered on Trip.com tagged as “new” listings even after the controversy became public — a sign that scrubbing fabricated properties from the wider distribution network takes longer than pulling them from a single platform.

The real OYO currently carries roughly a 6-out-of-10 guest rating on Expedia, with reviewers frequently citing dirty rooms and broken elevators — complaints that may help explain why rooms were being marketed under different, seemingly cleaner-sounding names in the first place. Nevada gaming regulators have not announced any formal action tied to the listings, but the episode has drawn renewed scrutiny to how loosely major booking platforms verify new hotel listings before making them bookable to the public, particularly in a market as saturated with off-Strip budget properties as Las Vegas.

For travelers browsing Las Vegas hotel deals or unfamiliar property names near the Strip, the episode is a reminder to double-check addresses and reviews before booking, especially when a listing looks unusually new or its branding doesn’t match anything found through a quick search. Visitors planning a trip that combines a hotel stay with a night at the tables should also make sure they’re checking legitimate, verified information on the Nevada gaming and hospitality scene rather than relying solely on a booking site’s own property description.