How popular booking sites such as Expedia handle controversial resort fees

If you go through a third-party booking site to make hotel reservations, you'll see certain hotels pop up first over others. In the case of Expedia Group sites, such as Orbitz, Homeaway and Travelocity, you'll now find hotels with resort fees lower in your search results.

Resort fees are mandatory charges that include a bundle of services guests have come to expect during a hotel stay. They're labeled everything from resort fees to hotel fees to destination fees and more.

More than one-third of people said they experienced a hidden hotel fee in the past two years, according to a Consumer Reports national survey of more than 2,000 adults in 2018.

Stakeholders, from consumers to the hotel industry to Congress, have weighed in on the issue. A bill proposed in the House of Representatives would force companies to more accurately reflect the price of hotel rooms – by including mandatory fees before taxes in a room's advertised cost. The hotel industry claims it is transparent, though consumers aren't satisfied.

 What are third-party booking sites doing about it?

Expedia takes on resort fees

Expedia looked to take on resort fees in an effort to be more transparent, Cyril Ranque, president of Expedia's Travel Partners Group, said at a company conference in November, according to a Skift report.

"We have started rolling out an algorithm that considers hotel-collected mandatory fees more directly," Victoria Cagliero, a spokesperson for Expedia Group, told USA TODAY. "We know hotel-collected mandatory fees can be confusing to consumers, and we expect, among otherwise equivalent hotels, these changes will result in higher visibility on our sites for hotels not charging these fees." 

How it shows resort fees: Listings – at least in several use cases – note a resort fee is excluded from the price before reserving a room. For a nine-night stay in Las Vegas, for instance, there's a warning about resort fees before you click in to pay.

Kayak

Kayak users have had the ability to take the total price of hotels (including taxes and fees) into account since 2013. "While users have the ability to personalize how their hotel results show up with filters, the higher the total price, the further down the list the hotel or provider goes," according to spokesperson Kayla Inserra. The company  factors in other metrics in this equation, including reviews.

How it shows resort fees: A deal for the Delano Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay is advertised for $189, for example, but once you click on it, you see there's a $37 resort fee per day.

Booking.com

Booking.com is altering the way it makes money on resort fees in an effort to be transparent with consumers, Angela Cavis, senior manager of communication & PR for North America, told USA TODAY. 

Booking.com will start charging hotels commissions in 2020 on mandatory extra fees that they charge customers.

"Hopefully, this will help continue to push the entire industry toward more transparency and fewer 'surprises’ for customers," Cavis said.

How it shows resort fees: For a stay at the InterContinental Miami, Booking.com shows $457 per night plus $109 taxes and charges. Click in and you'll see these fees broken down into $59.45 for 13% tax and $50 in resort fees.

TripAdvisor

Though TripAdvisor doesn't include resort fees as part of its rankings criteria, users comment about them often in reviews, and the main way people will know about those fees is from the reviews.

"TripAdvisor’s position is that it’s important for businesses to be transparent upfront about the services they offer for mandatory resort fees and that it should be clear to consumers what those fees cover," Kevin Carter, associate director of communication at TripAdvisor, told USA TODAY. "We think it’s important that consumers know what they are paying for." Essentially, the site leaves it to users to report. 

How it shows resort fees: For a stay at the Arlo NoMad hotel in New York, a $348 deal turned into a $417.48 deal once taxes and fees were added in the final price, including a $35 urban fee.

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