Worst New Airline and Hotel Fees of 2015

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

http://blog.bookingbuddy.com/2015/02...21934391%3A%3A

Mandatory "Fees": Fees you have to pay, in addition to the supposed fare or rate, are clearly the worst kind of fees. In fact, they're scams—deliberate falsifications of true prices. Here, hotels are the primary culprits, with their phony "resort" and other fees. Airlines tried it with "fuel surcharges," but governments around the world prevent them from featuring lowball fares plus their own fees—for now. With their intensively lobbied "Transparent Airfares Act," U.S. airlines are pushing to go back to the phony fee system. Leading consumer advocates are fighting this scam, but with limited success to date. And unless the FTC takes action, mandatory hotel fees are likely to spread to more major destinations. Noting the ubiquitous "resort" fees in so many vacation destinations, city hoteliers must be considering adding "metropolitan" fees.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Bottom line prices are the only fair way to do it. In Europe, the hotel rate you are quoted covers it all, including tax. I thus find it highly annoying that US hotels quote their rates without the tax. With airlines, it is interesting that while low cost carriers initially came out with the add on fees to the fare, some of them later led the move away from that, ditching such scams as fuel surcharges. Given current oil prices, if those airlines that charge such scams were honest, they would now be giving us a fuel rebate due to the collapse in oil prices, but they are actually charging the same fuel surchage as when oil cost twice as much as today.