Another day, another flagrant twisting of the truth by some of the people who cover news of travel industry.
You probably saw some posts and news headlines that told you that junk fees and resort fees at hotels have been banned. Here are a few headlines as examples:
CBS News: “New federal rule bans “junk fees” on hotels and live event tickets“
ABC News: “New federal rule bans ‘junk fees’ on hotels, live-event tickets“
Travel + Leisure: “‘Junk Fees’ on Hotels, Short Term Rentals to Be Banned — What to Know“
The Hill: “FTC bans junk ticket, hotel fees“
Reading those headlines, and many more like it, you’d probably think junk fees have been banned, right?
Nope. Sorry—they clickbaited you. Deeper down those posts, some of those journalists let the truth leak in—but you won’t see it unless you clicked first.
The U.S. government itself published a misleading headline to its own press release about it: “Federal Trade Commission Announces Bipartisan Rule Banning Junk Ticket and Hotel Fees“.
No, it didn’t.
Here’s what the FTC really did: Its new rule will require businesses to disclose those junk fees up front, not ban them.
Those bogus headlines are what American consumers actually wish was true and have been fervently begging for. But deep in its announcement, the FTC clearly admits (emphasis ours) that the new rule “does not prohibit any type or amount of fee, nor does it prohibit any specific pricing strategies. Rather, it simply requires that businesses that advertise their pricing tell consumers the whole truth up-front about prices and fees.”
Go ahead and read it for yourself. It’s buried in the sixth paragraph.
The “ban” is only on the practice of waiting to disclose the charges. Disclosing them with the opening price quote is something that many sites already do in some form anyway. (In California, it’s already the law.)
Our politicians didn’t have the backbone to stand up to the hotel industry, a big campaign donor to many, and ban resort feet.
A few news outlets came closer to the truth by adding the word “hidden,” as in Reuters’ “FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices“.
A better way to describe the FTC rule is that it only changed the moment that customers may be hit with junk fees. It’s merely a ban on waiting to deliver the blow.
In the future, the new rule will cause many hotels to slip down the ranking of booking engine search results so that the true bargains can float back to the top, where they ought to be. So we’re glad to see fee disclosures, for sure. But it’s not what Americans have been begging for.
Resort fees are still legal. Ridiculous fees in general are still AOK with the American government—even though Europe and many other countries have truly abolished them as an abuse of consumers.
No matter what Americans read, they’ll still be forced to pay all those stupid junk fees.