Tag Archives for fees.
Thomspon San Antonio Riverwalk is staging bathroom soap and lotion where guests expect complimentary amenities, even though using them can trigger extra charges. That’s a textbook hotel dark pattern: make something look free, hide the price list, and count on guests not noticing until it’s too late and they’re stuck.
Airlines keep pointing to higher fuel costs when they raise bag fees, and that is rhetorically powerful because passengers understandably expect lower costs to mean lower prices. But that is not how airline pricing really works: fees are one tool carriers use to manage total revenue, and they have no reason to promise those fees will fall just because one input cost does.
A Fifth Circuit judge openly laughed when the TSA argued it isn’t set up to refund millions of passengers—while defending a $48 million penalty against Southwest for allegedly failing to return the same security fees. The case tests whether an airline has to cut cash refunds for government fees when travel credits expire unused.
I’ve seen some truly absurd travel add-ons, but this one might be the strangest: airport rental cars in Jacksonville tack on a mandatory $3 “security fee.” It’s an airport pass-through that’s separate from the rest of the required surcharges—another example of how rental car pricing gets sliced into junk line items that can quietly add 50% or more to the real cost.
A Marriott Fairfield Inn in Plano, Texas, was caught charging guests a fake “city fee” for parking they never used. One reader exposed the scheme — and made them stop.
This Marriott is reportedly hiding parking charges as mandatory “City Fees” — even for guests without cars. It’s not the first hotel I’ve heard of doing this.
A $5 boarding pass fee sparked a standoff at the check-in counter. Bodycam footage shows the moment a passenger’s refusal ended with police taking him to jail.
A reader shares that the were billed “$50 to charge a laptop” at Paris Las Vegas, and they thought this was “an even more outrageous fee” than $26 for a bottle of water at Aria. Las Vegas executives can’t seem to figure out why tourist visits are declining in the city.
The Big Beautiful Bill has more and more warts that just keep coming out, including a new $250 “Visa Integrity Fee” for most foreigners applying for U.S. nonimmigrant visas. It’s a ‘refundable deposit’ that you’re supposed to get back for leaving the U.S. on time, though no one knows yet how refunds will actually happen. Implementing a cross-agency refund system is going to take… time. The fee amount will adjust up with inflation.
The better approach, now that these fees are showing up and making the property look exorbitantly expensive, might just be to call the cops on parties before any damage gets done? Put out free donuts and coffee and make the hotel a place cops are happy to stop by first, of course.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
