In the US it is common to have an amenities fee that you will only know, in most cases, the day of your check in. The fee applies whether you use the amenities or not.
California just passed a law banning any mandatory fee if it isn’t included in the advertised rates; the ban goes into force starting middle of next year.
The new law, which takes effect on July 1, 2024, “make[s] unlawful advertising, displaying, or offering a price for a good or service that does not include all mandatory fees or charges other than taxes or fees imposed by a government on the transaction.” If a fee is not optional and cannot be removed from a bill, the fee has to be disclosed from the top.
That being said, I would imagine that there is some wiggle room on “mandatory”. Like, a hotel is going to be allowed to charge for use of items in a minibar, for example – that’s not a mandatory fee. I don’t know what the bar is for notification that a given action will incur a fee.
Right turn on red didn’t exist anywhere until some states started allowing it; a lot of people thought that it would be too dangerous. Then it worked out okay, and other states added it, and eventually essentially everyone was doing it.
Just saying that it sounds like the direction things are going right now is to legislatively-restricting what hotels can charge without disclosure.
From my skim online, it sounds like the addition of hotel fees like this is relatively recent, and so this is something of a backlash.
California is so big that often, when they make a law, companies follow it nationally. It can be cheaper than having to maintain different rules for sifferent states
In the US it is common to have an amenities fee that you will only know, in most cases, the day of your check in. The fee applies whether you use the amenities or not.
California just passed a law banning any mandatory fee if it isn’t included in the advertised rates; the ban goes into force starting middle of next year.
https://www.frommers.com/blogs/arthur-frommer-online/blog_posts/california-bans-deceptive-resort-fees-see-what-s-affected-and-when
That being said, I would imagine that there is some wiggle room on “mandatory”. Like, a hotel is going to be allowed to charge for use of items in a minibar, for example – that’s not a mandatory fee. I don’t know what the bar is for notification that a given action will incur a fee.
That’s great for California.
Right turn on red didn’t exist anywhere until some states started allowing it; a lot of people thought that it would be too dangerous. Then it worked out okay, and other states added it, and eventually essentially everyone was doing it.
Just saying that it sounds like the direction things are going right now is to legislatively-restricting what hotels can charge without disclosure.
From my skim online, it sounds like the addition of hotel fees like this is relatively recent, and so this is something of a backlash.
California is so big that often, when they make a law, companies follow it nationally. It can be cheaper than having to maintain different rules for sifferent states