Hey, just a little DID YOU KNOW?
Hotels can charge a mandatory resort fee above the current online display price. This is very common in Las Vegas where heavily ‘discounted’ hotel rooms are offset by the large fees. EG: $60/night room + $20/night resort fee. Currently the FTC is cracking down on OTA’s (Online Travel Agencies), making sure they at very least display the resort fees. This is good, but I don’t think it’s going far enough. Hotels should be required to incorporate resort fees into the normal display price. Although it’s pretty obvious why this would benefit the consumers, I think it’d greatly benefit the OTA’s as well.
There’s no incentive for OTA’s to display the price with fees if there’s no enforced standard. Consider these two displays:
- OTA1: $50 + fees
- OTA2: $70 (includes fees)
Which is more expensive? You wouldn’t be able to tell without further investigation. If the fees were $30, OTA2 would actually be cheaper, but appears more expensive on first glance. Most travelers do a lot of comparison shopping- engaging with 4+ sites at a time. In my experience at Hotwire, this initial glance makes a huge difference. People won’t even navigate to the next page (where the fees are spelled out) if the initial price is more expensive than other sites. The competition is so tight that without an FTC mandate, Hotwire and other sites wouldn’t be able to afford displaying the fee-inclusive price.