Two members of the Senate of the United States introduced the bipartisan Hotel Fees Transparency Act last year to address mandatory resort fees and other fees which are charged by lodging companies in order to improve transparency for consumers — resulting in billions of dollars of profit for lodging companies — so why would lodging companies want the Hotel Fees Transparency Act of 2024 to pass?
Why Would Lodging Companies Want the Hotel Fees Transparency Act of 2024 to Pass?
The official stated purpose of the bill is “to prohibit unfair and deceptive advertising of prices for hotel rooms and other places of short-term lodging, and for other purposes.”
Despite the assertion that only six percent of hotel properties in the United States charge a mandatory fee at an average of $26.00 per night, “Today’s committee vote in the Senate is an important step toward a more transparent booking process for guests and a level playing field across the lodging industry — including short-term rentals, online travel agencies, metasearch sites, and hotels,” said Kevin Carey, according to this official press release from the American Hotel & Lodging Association on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. “We thank Sens. Klobuchar and Moran for their leadership on this issue, and we urge the Senate to quickly bring this bill to the floor for a vote. The House has already passed similar commonsense legislation and we look forward to working with both chambers to advance this bill to the president’s desk.”
Why would the then-interim president and chief executive officer of a trade organization that represents the lodging industry support legislation that could potentially stop hotel and resort properties from profiting from mandatory fees to the tune of billions of dollars?
“Several states have proposed or passed laws to take on junk fees and the industries that profit from them. The hotel industry’s response? Its own bill in Congress that would benefit hotel companies by pre-empting more robust state laws”, according to an Internet web site called Resort Fee Ripoff that was created by UNITE HERE — which describes itself as “a movement of people committed to changing lives in the hospitality industry by making sure our jobs are safe, respected, and provide enough to live on.”
All Kinds of Mandatory Fees
Mandatory “hidden” fees have become increasingly prevalent within the United States; and they have slowly been spreading to other countries. Lodging companies engage in charging these fees to advertise artificially “lower” rates to attract unsuspecting customers — only to alert the customer pertaining to the addition of mandatory fees during the process of booking a reservation and justifying the extra fee with some nonsense items that are designed to give the illusion of adding value. For example, this mandatory resort fee includes notary services with a maximum of two documents per day.
An increasing number of hotel and resort properties — and even hostels and motel properties, for that matter — have been charging guests a mandatory:
- Resort fee
- Room fee
- Destination fee
- Amenities fee
- Facilities fee
- Damage waiver fee
- Fee for having a safe in the room — but yet the hotel property is not responsible for valuables
- Parking recapture fee — whatever that is
- Historical Commitment fee — which should be more aptly named the Hysterical Commitment fee
Imagine these few of many examples of being:
- Charged as much as $8,257.00 for staying a week at this resort property
- Forced to pay both a service charge and a resort fees on the same hotel folio
- Charged a mandatory resort fee of $40.00 plus tax twice per night of the same stay at the same hotel property
Astonishingly, guests even get to have the privilege of paying taxes on most mandatory fees. In some cases, the mandatory fees are actually more expensive than the room rate itself. For example, a room rate that was advertised at $23.45 per night wound up totaling $79.37 per night when all of the taxes and mandatory fees were added, which is an increase of greater than 238.46 percent — or more than triple the initial advertised rate.
Final Boarding Call
The pressure has been mounting on the lodging industry to eliminate mandatory hidden “junk” fees — including the Hotel Advertising Transparency Act of 2019; the Hotel Advertising Transparency Act of 2022; and an effort by the president of the United States himself with the Junk Fee Prevention Act — but little seems to be progressing or happening in favor of the consumer.
How many acts do we need enacted before the acts act on getting their acts together and acting on what they are supposed to act with actions?…
…or is this all merely an act as part of some sort of inane legislative theater?!?
Regardless, I do not believe that the administration of Donald J. Trump when he becomes president of the United States again in 2025 will back legislation to pressure the lodging industry to eliminate charging mandatory fees to guests; so I do not believe that the Hotel Fees Transparency Act of 2024 will become law.
Mandatory “hidden junk” fees need to cease once and for all — preferably without inept government intervention.
You can perform the following actions to counter mandatory fees at hotel and resort properties:
- Do not patronize hotel and resort properties which charge mandatory fees
- Negotiate to have the mandatory fee removed from your bill for your stay
- You can sign a petition at Resort Fee Ripoff to inform the senator that represents you to oppose the Hotel Fees Transparency Act of 2024 until its language is revised to be more beneficial to consumers
- You can send a complaint to the Department of Consumer Affairs of the state of California
- Remember this one simple way to reclaim that resort fee which you paid…
All photographs ©2015, ©2016, and ©2024 by Brian Cohen.
