Travelers United has focused on hotel resort fees and family seating on planes for years. These commonsense issues were just mentioned in the State of the Union address and we received thanks from the White House staff for our efforts.
Sometimes working on what is considered an impossible mission is futile. But, after much futile work, often comes a reward along the way. Travelers United worked on trying to get extra fees included in the final prices back in 2009. We began our work on hotel resort fees in 2010. And the advocacy group began focusing on family seating on airplanes about a decade ago. All were mentioned in the 2023 State of the Union address.
Sometimes, sticking to just a few issues year after year can result in progress, even in the politically charged world of Washington, DC.
Are these issues genuinely impossible? Sometimes common sense doesn’t win in politics. This year it has a chance.
Technology is changing. The coming world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will inform consumers of the best prices. Locking in today’s high-tech does not answer tomorrow’s full-price disclosure.
Travelers United’s airline ancillary fees are simple honesty. But when politics and economics rear their heads the outcome does not always seem logical. Travelers United has no beef with how the airlines price their flights. Airlines can have as many fees as they like. The more the merrier. But every fee must be disclosed and made part of the buying process. However, today airlines complain that there are too many separate fees to be presented on the home page.
Airlines claim that each fee presented is another factor in competition. Without these ancillary fees, passengers would be paying for services they did not need. The industry rationale for fees is competition, but the number of fees creates confusion. There is a middle way, but airlines have not discovered it. Plus, the screen size is being reduced every year. About a decade ago, most online purchases were made on desktop and laptop computers. Today, it is the small smartphone screen and soon the much smaller wristwatch screen that will become the competitive commercial battleground.
New web and AI technology make, what a decade ago was a commonsense solution, much more difficult to fit into a written regulation.
Hotel resort fees, any way one examines them, fail the truth-in-advertising test. They are the poster child for junk fees.
The term junk fee was coined to describe mandatory hotel resort fees. A junk fee has no definition, they add nothing to the product being purchased, and vary from each establishment to the other. One hotel’s resort fee is another’s junk fee. Even the hotel lodging association claims these fees only affect seven percent of hotel rooms. In that case, eliminating them would not hurt the hotel industry. But, the reality of these mandatory hotel resort fees is that they have spread to every type of accommodation.
Plus, there is no relationship between hotel resort fees and the final price other than a tangible cost increase for consumers. During the pandemic, resort fees continued with no changes as advertised room rates dropped. Travelers United has religiously maintained that mandatory resort fees imposed by hotels should be a part of the advertised room rate. Without this change in hotel rules, consumers cannot know the accurate price of accommodations when shopping for accommodations.
Airline family seating together for no extra charge is common sense on every level.
When families have assigned seats together boarding is faster. Flight attendants can work on getting bags put away safely and not moving a mother or father next to their offspring. Since most passengers store their baggage overhead above their seats, having seat assignments makes storing luggage easier. While boarding a flight, the gate agents can focus on boarding passengers rather than rearranging seating if possible. And, so on.
Even the FBI has chimed in on this law telling the US that sexual predators seek to harm children forced to sit away from their parents.
However, airlines for only a money-making effort, have committed themselves to oppose families sitting together. Though this concept has been passed by both the House and Senate sides of Congress and signed by President Obama, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has made tortured legal wording a reason to keep the law from being enforced. Travelers United believes that the will of America’s travelers and Congress is clear in the current law. The President and the DOT Secretary should impose the current law and add it to the Code of Federal Regulations.
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Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
