Hotels that charge resorts fees will now appear lower in search results on Expedia & Hotels.com. A big part of why hotels charge resort fees is that they don’t pay commission to the online travel agency (in this case Expedia) on these fees. This is a win for consumers (hopefully it puts pressure on hotels to either drop resort fees or allow them to be clearly included in pricing on comparison sites) and a win for Expedia.
Hat tip to Skift
Welcome news indeed — yet a drop in the bucket of what’s needed.
Will be curious how this might affect Chase Travel (UR) listings too (as they use expedia)…. I’ve caught Chase UR tacking on hidden fees on various hotel reservations, that are not accounted for by taxes. I ask for a specific break-down of fees and taxes when I catch this, but when (Chase/expedia is not forthcoming, then I refuse to go forward with that reservation. (something bloggers have been very slow to catch)
Forget punishing them, just include the resort fee in the nightly fee for truth in advertising.
How about hidden fees OTA charges? The just show as Tax and Fee. So no one knows what the fee is.
Good move. Those resort fees are pain if not realized while booking.
Thank you expedia!
This is also why I love Kayak, which has a selection to show prices after taxes and fees.
It’s not like the taxes and fees change, so why not include them in the price?
Good move, Expedia!
Why don’t the OTAs simply show after tax&fee price in the search results?
What’s next, Expedia will take a page from Amex’s playbook andclaw back payments it made to those hotels for abuse?
I remember a while back there was a joint lawsuit by a couple of state AGs against some hotel chains for charging resort fees. Anyone has information on how that goes?
Yes! Good move.