Flying for Fun

Who runs the portal for Chase? If the resort fee is included in your total isn't a breakdown of fees taxes available before purchase? You could pop over to Marriott, Booking.com, Expedia or Travelocity or even the property website if you want to know how much the resort fee is before you confirm the reservation if they truly don't list it.

James

margarita girl

C17PSGR

I don't think that's how it works. Normally, the inclusions from a resort fee run on a daily basis to make sure you don't get value out of them. For example, I suspect someone staying at this hotel would get drinks some of the days but not all of the days. They might use dry cleaning 1 or more days and use the very overpriced salon. I would be shocked if more than a handful of people get $50 of value per day on this fee. Of course, its even more ludicrous considering the price point of the hotel

Kacee

StR NYC offer without question the best resort fee value I've ever seen, and by a large margin. They let me roll the F&B credit.

moondog

Is it disclosed on the listings page (where other hotels are included, and you can sort by price)? (I'm too lazy to check, but I think I know the answer.)

myperks

GrayAnderson

The counter is that if the fee goes high enough you start raising the chance of either the fee getting so high that it causes commercial problems for the property (e.g. I can't see a fee in the $50-100 range going over well at many properties) or you alter the incentive enough to push them to roll the cost back in with the rate. It is one thing for a property to "get away with", say, $10-15/night (sadly, a lot of folks won't even notice that amid the piles of taxes) but $20-30 seems a bit less likely to slide under the radar. By the way, I'm a little surprised that we haven't seen some hotel try to take their lowest nightly rate of the last few years, knock $10 off of it, and recategorize "room rate" vs "mandatory fee" for the sake of a mix of taxes and advertising (though to be fair, doing so might actually be beyond the pale legally and/or breach some ineffable boundary of fraudulent misrepresentation [1]).

As an attached aside, I am surprised that those AGs haven't also targeted OTAs for obscuring the fees in question. A settlement requiring them to let you turn on "include resort fees" would actually go a long way on the transparency front. Even forcing one of them to buckle would probably go halfway to fixing the issue (since we'd all suddenly have somewhere to turn). TBH I'm very surprised Hotwire, in particular, doesn't roll them in to aid in disguising hidden rate hotels (very often if I know the fee I can come close to deriving the hotel from it; at the very least I can get to a shortlist that I can easily filter from there).


[1] I'm guessing that there's a difference between "$120 room sold as $110 (plus unavoidable $10 fee)" and "$120 room sold as $20 room (plus unavoidable $100 fee)". Where that line is I have no idea. At least with the airlines, you can theoretically duck most or all of the fees they tack on.

X-ON

In my humble opinion the pricing of a hotel room should be expressed as Room (and associated costs to your accommodation) + Tax where the room charge contains all fee structures.
It would be logical because the beneficiary of your fees are the same, the hotelier, and the beneficiary of your tax payment is the government (either federal or local).
Then for complete transparency all prices should be quoted as all in but with a breakdown of fees and taxes on the back end.

moondog

I actually support the idea of including taxes as well in prices displayed. While it might not be the hotel's fault that SF has higher taxes than the East Bay, as a consumer, I'd prefer not to crunch numbers.

estnet

I guess with an entry price of about $1200 plus $200 taxes they can afford to be a little nice with the resort fee

budgetmiles

You can often go to an international version of the site to view final prices on the search page.
That's good advice for those of us expecting/concerned about resort fees, but it's unlikely most users of the site are. And I think even the savviest travelers will miss something like that every once in a while - my itineraries have become more and more complex over time, and certain things just slip through the cracks.

UA-NYC

This thread was started because it's yet more ammo for the state ADs out there as they start to bring cases against the hotel companies. And Marriott is idiotically helping the ADs make their argument with all the obfuscation they put through with these bogus fees.

Of course, a lot of teeth gnashing would go away if Marriott considered waiving them for some of their best customers...like you know...Hyatt (cue certain posters getting steamed again, boo hoo...)

Segments

JBord

They don't have to. That rate is what they owe the government. It just so happens that most businesses choose to show tax as a separate line item so the price of their product appears lower. Technically speaking, Marriott is responsible for paying that tax, regardless of what money they collect from a customer. If the rate changes, they could go the customer-friendly route and not change the customer's total payment.

Somewhat, yes. It's also similar to how discount airlines offer $50 fares. As long as you don't bring any type of luggage, need a glass of water, want to select your seat, etc.

They don't need to show the tax rate at all if they want to bundle everything. As long as they pay the tax. But I think what you've outlined is how pricing will eventually be if these lawsuits are successful.

At least reducing the rate for elites would make sense, because nothing makes people angrier when traveling then having to pay for something they should be getting for free (like internet). Ultimately though, they just need to cover their costs in the base room rate rather than pass them through in a separate, somewhat hidden charge. I'd rather see this problem go away for everyone rather than just a select group.

cfabar1