Mandatory Resort Fees May Disappear

[CalGalTraveler]

4 Reasons Why Mandatory Resort Fees May Finally Be Disappearing

Mandatory resort fees — and their brethren, which include mandatory destination fees and mandatory facilities fees — have been the scourge of the lodging industry in the United States and several other countries…

…but although now is not exactly the time to celebrate — just yet, anyway — evidence exists that the heyday of these nefarious fees may actually be starting to wane; and at least four reasons have been cited.

1. Charging Hotel and Resort Properties Commission on Resort Fees
In addition to artificially lowering the room rate for comparison purposes with the competition by potential customers and therefore intentionally obfuscating the true total cost of a stay, mandatory resort fees were also vehicles for hotel and resort properties to avoid paying commissions to travel agencies.

“Hotels raise the concern that including the cost of bundled services in the room rate, rather than charging a separate resort fee, would increase the commissions they pay to OTAs. Hotels pay commissions to OTAs for booking their rooms to consumers. These commissions are typically a percentage of a hotel’s room rate.”

That statement which you just read was extracted from page 34 of a report — which was released in January 2017 — titled Economic Issues: Economic Analysis of Hotel Resort Fees by Mary W. Sullivan of the Bureau of Economics of the Federal Trade Commission of the United States. OTA refers to what is known as an online travel agency — such as Orbitz, Expedia or Travelocity.

This is expected to change sometime this month in June of 2019 — if it has not already in effect — when Booking.com will reportedly charge a commission to any hotel and resort property in the United States which imposes a mandatory resort fee on its guests, according to this article written by Simon Calder, who is a travel correspondent for The Independent: “As an extension of our overarching aim to provide our customers with transparent information about the total price they will need to pay at a property when they make a booking and to create a level playing field for all of our accommodation partners, we are updating our process when it comes to charging commission on mandatory extra fees that customers are asked to pay at the property.”

https://thegate.boardingarea.com/4-...851.1303970461.1560180539-17079620.1557782665

 

[Panina]

4 Reasons Why Mandatory Resort Fees May Finally Be Disappearing

Mandatory resort fees — and their brethren, which include mandatory destination fees and mandatory facilities fees — have been the scourge of the lodging industry in the United States and several other countries…

…but although now is not exactly the time to celebrate — just yet, anyway — evidence exists that the heyday of these nefarious fees may actually be starting to wane; and at least four reasons have been cited.

1. Charging Hotel and Resort Properties Commission on Resort Fees
In addition to artificially lowering the room rate for comparison purposes with the competition by potential customers and therefore intentionally obfuscating the true total cost of a stay, mandatory resort fees were also vehicles for hotel and resort properties to avoid paying commissions to travel agencies.

“Hotels raise the concern that including the cost of bundled services in the room rate, rather than charging a separate resort fee, would increase the commissions they pay to OTAs. Hotels pay commissions to OTAs for booking their rooms to consumers. These commissions are typically a percentage of a hotel’s room rate.”

That statement which you just read was extracted from page 34 of a report — which was released in January 2017 — titled Economic Issues: Economic Analysis of Hotel Resort Fees by Mary W. Sullivan of the Bureau of Economics of the Federal Trade Commission of the United States. OTA refers to what is known as an online travel agency — such as Orbitz, Expedia or Travelocity.

This is expected to change sometime this month in June of 2019 — if it has not already in effect — when Booking.com will reportedly charge a commission to any hotel and resort property in the United States which imposes a mandatory resort fee on its guests, according to this article written by Simon Calder, who is a travel correspondent for The Independent: “As an extension of our overarching aim to provide our customers with transparent information about the total price they will need to pay at a property when they make a booking and to create a level playing field for all of our accommodation partners, we are updating our process when it comes to charging commission on mandatory extra fees that customers are asked to pay at the property.”

https://thegate.boardingarea.com/4-...851.1303970461.1560180539-17079620.1557782665

Even if it disappears or diminishes in hotels on the rental sites, doesn’t mean they will in timeshares that are traded unless the trading companies say no.