Hacker News Reader

Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

This is specifically a hack to get around listing and booking costs. I'm surprised the big players like Expedia or Google or Booking haven't started cracking down on it themselves.

View on HN

In the EU they are now mandated to show the full price everywhere after they tried to pull that same stuff here.

https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/airbnb-will-now-use-clear...

https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/bookingcom-commits-adjust...

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...

So that's (part of the reason) why booking was so relatively painless for my recent holidays. Another thing to thank the EU for.

Sometimes, but not always. In some cases I only find out after I've booked. They could at least tell me about the fee on their site before booking if they only wanted to trick Google. They want to trick me too.

Well it depends on where you come from. If you book direct on Bookings.com you never see the website. And if you have a blatantly different price on Bookings than Expedia you might get dinged by Bookings!

I agree that resort fees are BS, but hotel listing sites are also an absolute coordinated shakedown on hotels and this is their response.

Even if you go through bookings.com, you still see a final $ amount before paying if they include the fees in the booking cost. That's their hack to show up higher when you look for low prices. Some places are so scammy that they charge the resort fee much later, in-person, as you're checking in or out.

Are EU residents protected from this? I never encountered any fees except booking price.

Again, Bookings.com takes up to 20% off of the entire price. So it's in the hotel's incentive to hide as much of the price from Bookings.com as possible by waiting until you are in person to charge you the rest.

I thought resort fees were a Las Vegas thing. Are other places doing it as well? I hope not as it get very expensive very quickly.

I've seen them a lot of times for nicer-ish hotels in any major city. Sometimes it will include things like Wi-fi or breakfast, but usually it's mandatory with the stay.

Yep. Most places with a pool or on-site spa.. I've seen them in San Diego, Chicago, and Hawaii of the top of my head.

They are also in a race to the bottom.

Some booking sites will have an option to show prices after all fees, but it will never be on by default.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com