There are a lot of lists of wishes for the coming year that are published at New Years. It seems everyone wants something or wants to change something. The turn of the calendar is used as a marker for change. But, Travelers United is not changing its wish list. Truth in advertising and making prices public is the bedrock of competition.
Truth is the New Years resolution that Travelers United works every day to fulfill with legislators, regulators and the travel industry honchos. Clear pricing allows travel consumers to comparison shop.
Is it too much to ask for a complete price and the rules for travel? All of travel seems to relish publishing prices that are not complete and creating complex rules that are buried in small-print (or in ALL CAPS) contracts and deep within websites.
Airlines are masters of obfuscation. First, airlines do not disclose all of their ancillary fees during the buying process. Next, they create a complex set of exemptions to these fees based on everything from what credit card is used for the purchase to the level of frequent flier program participation of each customer. Then as if that is not enough, airlines make their rules virtually impossible to understand and read.
Here is an American Airlines airfare rule labeled QA14USL5. So, you don’t have to dig into another page on the Web, here is a screen shot of the airfare rules. And, just so readers don’t think I am picking on American, here is Delta’s fare rules for a similar flight.
This is what the airlines (and a court of law, should there be a problem) expect each and every passenger to read prior to purchasing an airline ticket. You agree that you know these airfare rules every time you purchase a ticket.
These rules are in addition to the American Airlines Contract of Carriage to which every passenger is subject.
Passengers deserve better.
Hotels don’t have such complexity in their room rates, however, they are inflicted with random “resort fees” that can add anywhere from a few dollars to more than $30 to the cost of hotel rooms. Here are two examples of how resort fees are dealt with by Marriott and by Expedia. Note: Expedia is upfront and clear that there will be a resort fee. Marriott uses doublespeak and hides resort fees under a “taxes and fees” label in the final screen before paying or reserving the room. There is no way that consumers can compare prices prior to clicking through to each hotel.
Here’s Expedia’s disclosure for the same hotel on the same dates, only available after clicking on the hotel from the search page.
Initial hotel listings should include all mandatory taxes and fees. That is the only way that the free market can work properly. Current hotel policies are deceptive and misleading and stop open competition. They also cheat travel agents out of commission dollars and hotel management companies out of their management and franchise fees.
Car rentals have reached the point of absurdity when it comes to taxes and fees. Recently, I rented a car in San Diego, my confirmation came out reading: Base Rate – $32.92 and Taxes and fees – $37.45. When taxes and fees are more than the rental base costs, there needs to be more disclosure.
All online travel agency sites such as Expedia, Orbitz and Priceline that I checked showed the full cost of car rentals including taxes and fees beneath the actual rental fee, albeit in a smaller or greyed-out font. Here is a detail of the Expedia listing for rental cars available from Jan. 23 – Jan. 27, 2015. These online travel agencies also make it easy to compare prices of the rental cars.
The actual rental car companies also provide total pricing. Avis.com presents their prices as a single price that includes mandatory taxes and fees. Of course, when consumers are on the Avis site, they cannot compare prices with other providers unless the consumers switches to another car rental website.
Of the three major elements of travel presented here, only rental cars provide consumers the full cost of their services and allow consumers to compare apples to apples.
Travelers United will be working actively during the coming year to add transparency to airfares, together with their ancillary fees and exceptions, and with hotel providers and online travel agencies to create more transparency about hotel resort fees. Getting the travel industry to tell the truth about pricing isn’t a simple process.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
