Hotel resort fees may soon be coming to an end. The LA Times is reporting that the Federal Trade Commission has warned 22 hotel operators that adding fees (such as resort fees) might violate the law.
From the LA Times:
In May, the FTC hosted a conference on what it calls “drip pricing,” which it described as “a technique in which firms advertise only part of a product’s price and reveal other charges later as the customer goes through the buying process. The additional charges can be mandatory charges, such as hotel resort fees or fees for optional upgrades and add-ons.”
Sound familiar? Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition; Charlie Leocha, executive director of the Consumer Travel Alliance; and Ed Perkins, a longtime consumer advocate, think it does. In an August letter to the FTC, the three wrote: “Mandatory artificial fees … can make a hotel’s posted rate appear to be below the true price by as much as $30 a night — more than enough to drive consumer choices in the travel marketplace.” They noted that the practice makes it difficult to determine how much your final bill will be, which hurts leisure and business travelers who must be attentive to the bottom line.
While non-mandatory fees such as parking charges appear to be acceptable, mandatory fees such as resort fees ‘might’ violate the law. From the article: