Originally Posted by
Often1
Rather than having a fit, just do the arithmetic. If you book a $300 room with a $40 fee, that is a $340 room. If that is too much, move on.
Yeah that's a big no to "move on" - sure, in theory, the base prices should just adjust downward in a competitive market. But we know they don't. At the very least, the fees and the lack of opacity around them add to the (economist speak) "shoe leather" cost of shopping for travel - search costs increase, and suppliers can use a marketing quirk to increase their pricing power.
It's bad policy that these are legal, and it's bad business when businesses proliferate them.