Just when you think you’ve seen it all in the travel biz, you realize you haven’t seen it all. This week brings two fresh reports of evil surcharges in both the airline and hotel industry. As one of my readers said, caveat aviator.
Evil fee #1 … You’ve probably heard about mandatory housekeeping gratuities and bell gratuities, but you thought only the bad hotels did that. Not so. A lawsuit filed last month by the Seattle law firm Gordon Murray Tilden contends Starwood has a “policy and practice” of assessing these surcharges. “Customers of Starwood hotels are only advised of these mandatory charges after they physically arrive at the Starwood hotel at which they have made the reservation,” the suit, which is seeking class-action status, contends.
Yes, you read right. That’s Starwood — as in Sheraton, W, Westin and St. Regis.
Evil fee #2 … Fellow travel blogger Peter Greenberg alerted me to his report of excessive fees on European discount carrier easyJet. The carrier, whose motto is “Come on, let’s fly!” obviously doesn’t include your luggage in that statement, because it charged him an eye-popping $514.69 for an overweight bag.
“I could have easily stopped a total of 20 strangers at the airport and offered them a free trip to Paris or London — round trip — for what it cost two people to check in an additional one bag each,” he writes.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from the Starwoods and easyJets of the world, it’s not that travel companies are avaricious. We already knew that. It’s not that they’d charge us for everything that isn’t bolted down. They’ve been doing that for years.
It’s that now, more than ever, you have to read all of the fine print before you book. Because if a travel company can find a loophole, you can bet it will jump through it.
Don’t give them the chance.
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