Many of us are desperate to travel this summer after a pandemic stifled our plans for years. But travelers—and I’m sorry to be a bummer—beware: Those seemingly cheap airline tickets or hotel rooms advertised online can be a pitfall to make you spend more than you expect.
That’s because hotels and airlines, struggling to recoup their losses from the pandemic, are increasingly turning to consumers with hidden costs, according to surveys and travel experts. Regulators call these “junk fees.”
You’ve probably come across junk costs at least a few times in your travels. The additional costs can take many forms, such as fees for resort amenities, checked baggage, and seat selection, and they are usually not disclosed in advance when you use an online search engine. They sneak in towards the end of a trade.
This strategy in the travel industry, known as ‘unbundling’, is not new. But some fees, such as baggage and seat selection on planes, have crept up during the pandemic, according to studies. And vague hotel resort fees, which are typically a $20 to $50 daily bulk charge for basic services like Wi-Fi and parking, have become commonplace.
All told, hotel-related clutter costs cost travelers about $3 billion a year, according to Consumer Reports. According to IdeaWorks, an airline consulting firm, revenue from ancillary costs, including carry-ons, seat assignments and early boarding, rose for airlines to $102.8 billion by 2022, up 56 percent from the prior year.
That means the days of using search engines like Google, Expedia, and others to quickly search for travel deals are long gone. You may be able to get an idea of the estimated cost of a ticket or hotel room, but you’ll have to put in a lot more time and effort to add up the actual costs.
“The hotels and airlines want to make it hard for you to really compare what your flight or hotel stay costs because they don’t like being bought by price alone,” said Henry Harteveldt, the president of Atmosphere Research, a travel analytics company in San Francisco.
Unwanted charges are so pervasive that regulators say the practice needs to change quickly. The Federal Trade Commission, which launched an investigation into the fees last year, said it planned to announce rules in the coming months prohibiting companies from charging them.
But until new laws come into effect, it’s up to us to watch for deceptive pricing tactics and avoid them where possible. Here are some ideas for doing that.
Hotel costs
What does a hotel waste surcharge look like?
Let’s say you book a room at the Grayson Hotel by Hyatt this month. It may show up as $331 for a room per night in an online search tool like Google or Expedia. But once you’re in the checkout process, the actual price goes up to $421.
When you click on the details, you will see the added taxes, which you should expect. But less expected is a vague $34 destination fee — which includes Wi-Fi, gym access, and a 10 percent discount at the hotel restaurant — charged daily. That’s about 8 percent of the cost of the room.
After a few days, those small costs add up.
“What we have is opaque, deceptive pricing,” said Chuck Bell, a director at Consumer Reports who has opposed junk charges for years. “The tour provider is reluctant to tell you the full price up front, so they hide it.”
While hotels make it difficult to see their resort fees, many resources online regularly track charges.
Resort Fee Checker allows you to search for a hotel to see if resort fees are charged and, if so, how much. NerdWallet, a personal finance website, conducted an analysis of the top resort fee offenders this year. Wyndham Properties, Hyatt and IHG charged the highest, averaging 3.8 percent to 6.5 percent of the total cost of a room, the study found.
Another best practice is to check prices directly through a hotel’s website rather than through an outside agency such as Expedia or Priceline. That’s because hotels occasionally charge different resort fees than those that book through third parties. And if you join hotel loyalty programs, they often offer to waive resort fees for repeat customers.
Airline ticket
Airlines make the process extra painful, as additional fees are generally not shown until deep in the ticket booking process. After you have already selected a flight and entered your personal details, you will be shown what it would cost to select seats or check in a bag.
By far the best rule of thumb is to familiarize yourself with a brand’s business model and the types of costs it typically incurs, Mr Harteveldt said. It has become common knowledge that budget airlines offering the cheapest tickets make up the difference in price by charging more for basic amenities such as seat selection and luggage.
An analysis by NerdWallet in February found that budget brands Frontier and Spirit Airlines charged the most for seat selection, and Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines charged the least.
If you choose an airline that charges for seat selection, you can choose not to select a seat and then hope to do so with the customer service representative at the terminal. But that’s a gamble and is especially not ideal for families.
Insert time
If you want to travel on a budget, more labor is needed now. After entering all the numbers for each vendor, add up the totals with all costs included. Only then can you make real cost comparisons.
Hopefully we won’t have to do this again in the future. Doug Farrar, a spokesperson for the FTC, said that instead of advising consumers on how to deal with the surprise charges, the agency sought to get companies to scrap junk fees entirely with rules regulating the practice.
“We’re going to try to put an end to it,” he said. But he added: “I don’t think you can strictly avoid it. It’s just ingrained in the process.”
Some brands are getting ahead of regulatory action by changing their methods. Marriott International said it recently updated its room rates to include resort fees when people used the app and website to search for bookings. Hyatt said in a statement that it planned to do the same.
Of course, that doesn’t mean brands will stop charging. But it will help to know right away when a deal isn’t as great as it seems. Then you can book elsewhere.
