Originally Posted by
storewanderer
I am very much a pro-business person generally speaking. I typically feel that things like this should be left up to the business and the government needs to leave it alone. This is a case where certain businesses have engaged in a practice of lower room rates advertised with a resort display disclosed at the last moment to try to appear to undercut other businesses. Those other businesses have chosen to follow rather than take the high road. So this is a case where the government should come out and make the practice of displaying hotel pricing inclusive of all taxes and fees a legal requirement, just like with airplane tickets.
In terms of a lawsuit, I do agree that it's more logical for a hotel to act than a state AG. But in terms of the bolded statement, it seems that's the only reaction that hotels seem to take.
I've always felt that a hotel who doesn't charge a resort fee could possibly win a lawsuit against either a hotel group (Marriott, Hilton) or an online travel agency (Orbitz, Expedia) because their relative price seems higher than it is on the initial search page. That's my beef with resort fees. I don't really care how hotels split up what I pay. I just want to be able to see the all-in price on that initial search page.
That said, I get why an individual hotel hasn't sued. Most hotels aren't super profitable. Spending money on a speculative lawsuit wouldn't be a great way to spend money. Anyone with an ounce of business sense would jump on the band wagon and add a resort/service fee. Sadly, taking that high road would be expensive.