“Don’t mislead and deceive us,” say American consumers in a poll prepared for Travelers United regarding mandatory hotel fees. This is an ongoing project to get this issue of misleading and deceptive hotel fees to be included in the room rates. The consumer organization is working through the National Association of Attorneys General, the US Congress and with the Federal Trade Commission.
A national poll of registered voters shows that 80 percent believe hotels and resorts should be required to include mandatory resort fees in the daily room rate to enable them to comparison shop before they book a room.
In the nationwide poll of 1,100 registered voters, 22 percent were charged a mandatory fee in addition to the room rate and tax in the past 12 months. Travelers United, a non-‐profit with 23,000 members, commissioned the poll. It was conducted by Mason-‐Dixon Polling & Research August 17-‐27.
Travelers United is renewing its call on the Federal Trade Commission to adopt an opinion that all mandatory fees must be included in the advertised room rate. The FTC warned 22 hotels in 2012 that mandatory fees may violate a ban on deceptive and unfair practices, but has not taken any action to end the practice since then.
“If the fee is required, it must be included in the nightly rate,” says Charlie Leocha, co-‐ founder and chairman of Travelers United. “Hotels that charge mandatory resort fees hurt families by denying them the ability to comparison shop online.”
Hotel fees and surcharges are forecast to grow to a record $2.47 billion in 2015, according to a study released by New York University’s Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism in August 2015. These fees are often not subject to municipal hotel and occupancy taxes. The report can be found at http://bit.ly/1hOWDJX.
The poll results closely mirrored a survey of 625 registered voters in Florida that found that 76 percent believe hotels should “be required to include resort fees in the daily room rate to allow guests to comparison shop before they book a room.” The poll was also conducted by telephone from July 20 through July 23, 2015 by Mason‐Dixon Polling & Research.
This is a case where good honest advertising will eventually be driven out by bad misleading and deceptive practices.
Though the America Hotel and Lodging Association claims that the problem with mandatory hotel fees only affects seven percent of lodging nationwide, it reaches to 80 percent in resort areas like Las Vegas and Hawaii. When a hotel room is advertised for $150 a consumer should have some assurance that is the price. However, when consumers are enticed by what seem to be low room rates, they learn later in the buying process that there may be a mandatory hotel fee of anywhere from $25 to $50 and more. That is unfair and deceptive.
In Las Vegas, when most major hotels began assessing mandatory hotel fees, Caesars Palace announced that they would not do so. However, after years of losing room nights because other hotels in Vegas, like MGM Grand, were advertising lower prices, though their prices were the same or less than those offered by Caesars. Eventually, Caesars gave up and started the same hidden resort fee game. Now that Ceasars have stooped, unwillingly, to level the competitive playing field, they are doing better vis a vis MGM. That is a shame. Deceptive prices should not be sanctioned by the government.
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.
