If you travel, you now face all kinds of surprising junk fees. They are activated by “drip pricing”. There is little you can do to avoid junk fees. See end of this article for what you can do! These are travel tips from award winning, The Women’s Travel Group.
Give it a try: locate junk fees added to hotel bookings. To hide the real hotel cost and get a top spot on an online booking engine list, hotels add junk fees to basic room costs. Example: my hotel for a birthday weekend priced at $395 (it was a special hotel in a unique town). You start the booking, it says $395 without taxes and fees. Next taxes and fees add another $106. In that number was $53.50 per day resort fee. Look carefully before you pay.
What does a resort fee get you? In my case, parking, pool, fitness area lobby refreshments which was water, coffee, wifi. Parking seemed expensive but acceptable. The others should have been included in the price of any luxury property.
89% of airlines charge a hidden fee. Airline checked bag fees? We know these well. What you might not know relates to European airlines. Some European airlines have different tiers of checked bag fees: one, if you prepay and a second higher one, if you pay at check in. Some now also charge carry on bag fees if your bag is too large. What is too large remains a mystery.
Seat selection fees: I recently read that some airlines deliberately seat you away from your co-booking partner. This is done to encourage you to buy better seats together. Ugly ugly.
Departure fees are usually included in an airline ticket; but not always.
Tips might not be included in a trip cost. Ask up front if they are and if not, what is expected. A shocking fact I discovered is the suggested fee for Americans’ tips on a cruise was much more that recommended to European travelers.
Add this all up, and you’ll need a Hewlett Packard computer.
Some ideas from The Women’s Travel Group on what you can do.
You can complain to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Biden is definitely interested in deception on line.
You can call the hotel and refuse to pay an amenity fee; it is worth a try. Some are flexible if you book directly not through a third party.
You can pack lighter and go carry on, get laundry done overseas. In a next life I intend to invent Uber Laundry. I bought a set of lightweight travel clothes to better manage.
You can translate your travel pages from European languages to English to see if there are differences. (That is how I find out about the tipping disparity). Select ALL, select copy then put the text into the company name ending with a European link: .fr France. .uk for United Kingdom, .de Germany.
Travel tips from The Women’s Travel Group. Space is available on Scotland, Ireland, Sicily, Malta and other Summer and Autumn trips. Call us at 646 309 5607.
