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When you’re shopping online for a travel deal to a vacation getaway, it’s common to be lured in by a price. After all, many of us choose our destination based on how much it will cost us.
But a number of travel resorts have taken to listing a bare-bones price online only to inflate it with various fees when it’s time to click the “buy” button.
In this article, we’re going to show you how to spot, track and avoid hidden resort fees.
Money expert Clark Howard says that hidden fees are as numerous as hotel rooms at a tourist destination. These extra charges can be found on your bill by looking for words like “administrative fee,” “amenities fee” or “resort fee.”
Clark says this is how a typical resort pricing trick works:
“You’ll be told the rate would be $175 a night, but then you get there and there’d be another $20 a night to pay for the amenities of the place, like the fancy pool or whatever,” Clark says in his podcast.
In many cases, when you’re booking online, you’ll have to look closely to compare the quoted price with the final tally at checkout.
You see a resort package that looks like this:
Wow, $1,332! Great price, right? For two people, that’s $2,662. And that’s how it shows up on screen.
But when you go to make the purchase…
The total jumps up to $2,702! Now, for some people those extra charges may not be a lot, but others may be wondering what’s going on.
We did a deep dive into the hidden resort fees and associated charges and here’s what we found. Let’s look at some common fees in the lodging and hotel industry:
Of course, you could also incur other charges (safe fees, Wi-Fi fees) from the service or activity provider that are not even included in the quoted price.
Clark says before you click “purchase,” on a resort trip, double check the prices every step of the online process.
This post was last modified on September 18, 2019 12:20 pm
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