The push for full transparency of resort charges—which may add a whole bunch of additional {dollars} to your closing receipt—has taken the type of a Home invoice that handed the GOP-controlled chamber with overwhelming bipartisan assist.
The No Hidden FEES Act would create a single normal to transparently show charges throughout your entire long- and short-term lodging business. It can require all added charges to reservations for resorts and short-term leases—together with “resort fees” that even resorts with out resort facilities tack on—to be listed and disclosed up entrance so individuals have a practical thought of lodging costs and might examine choices as they see match.
The Home invoice, handed on June 11 in a 384-25 vote, was launched by Representatives Younger Kim (R-Calif.) and Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) in December, just a few months after Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) launched the Lodge Charges Transparency Act within the Senate.
The legislative efforts are according to President Joe Biden’s crackdown on hidden charges, which first focused the airline business within the summer time of 2021.
The Home invoice additionally provides the Federal Commerce Fee and particular person states the authority to implement violations and failures to reveal all resort charges as unfair or misleading enterprise practices. It has additionally been praised by outstanding business commerce teams, together with The American Lodge & Lodging Affiliation (AHLA) and the Asian American Lodge House owners Affiliation.
“It makes sense for all lodging businesses—from short-term rentals to online travel agencies, metasearch sites, and hotels—to tell guests up front about mandatory fees,” AHLA’s interim president and CEO Kevin Carey wrote in a assertion, including the group has “the goal of establishing a uniform standard across the industry as law.”
The Asian American Lodge House owners Affiliation known as passage of the invoice a “significant win,” in keeping with a assertion launched on June 12. Chairman Miraj S. Patel wrote that the laws might help individuals make better-informed selections on the place to remain, including that the group appears ahead to seeing the invoice transfer by way of the Senate.
The transfer is one among a number of meant to disclose hidden charges that many industries, together with the airline, housing, ticketing and occasions sectors, typically bury all through the checkout course of. Final month, the Home handed one other invoice meant to focus on junk charges within the live performance business known as the TICKET Act. Final October, the FTC proposed a rule that will ban hidden junk charges and different “bogus” charges, that are charges that “dishonest businesses routinely misrepresent or fail to adequately disclose the nature or purpose of,” the regulator mentioned in a assertion.
In the meantime, the Senate’s Lodge Charges Transparency Act, which might require full transparency of all required resort charges aside from authorities or quasi-government entity-imposed charges, has been launched and nonetheless must move the chamber. If it does move, it could have to be reconciled with the Home invoice earlier than Biden can signal it into legislation.
Biden’s push to reveal hidden junk charges has been one of the constant priorities of his presidency. In his 2024 State of the Union speech in March, he mentioned his administration had “proposed rules to make cable, travel, utilities and online ticket sellers tell you the total price up front so there are no surprises.”
