Leading hotel booking websites fail to show REAL costs upfront

Hotel booking websites are failing to show the full cost of a stay upfront in their search results, according to an investigation by the UK’s biggest consumer website, MoneySavingExpert.com (MSE). The lack of transparency is leaving travellers struggling to compare prices and find the cheapest overall deal.

MSE found that five of nine brokers and all four comparison sites it checked didn’t always show the final cost in the initial search results, once taxes and resort fees are factored in. Customers only discover the true total when they click through – and even then it sometimes requires multiple clicks. In one example, it found that over a six-day stay you could end up paying £275 more than shown on the search results page.

When checking the cost of a room in Amsterdam, Athens, Las Vegas, Orlando and Rome over a variety of dates between August 2018 and March 2019, the investigation found:

• The five brokers that didn’t always show the full cost upfront were Agoda, Getaroom, Netflights, Travel Republic and Zenhotels (1).

• All four comparison sites MSE checked – Kayak, Skyscanner, TravelSupermarket and Trivago – failed to include taxes or resort fees in their cheapest listing on the initial search page on at least one occasion (2).

The investigation also found that in some cases when a comparison site listed a number of brokers for a single hotel, some of the prices would include taxes and resort fees and others wouldn't, creating a potentially unfair comparison.

The competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), is looking at whether some charges are being made clear to customers as part of its ongoing investigation into hotel booking sites. The CMA has now asked MSE to submit these results to inform its work.

After MSE revealed the results of the investigation, several sites have said they're looking at ways to improve the way they present prices, and one – Kayak – said it had already fixed the issue.

Guy Anker, deputy editor of MoneySavingExpert.com, said: "Our investigation shows that ridiculously you simply can't always trust the first figure you're shown.

"It's confusing for customers and makes doing a meaningful price comparison very hard. And as a result, many travellers may end up paying much more than they need to because they struggle to find the cheapest deal.

"Long-term, the solution's simple. The price you're first shown MUST be the total, including extra fees - even fees that have to be paid at the hotel. If that's not happening, the competition watchdog should act to make sure that it does.

"This doesn't mean you shouldn't use these hotel brokers and comparison sites when booking a room - they may still work out cheapest overall, and can narrow down the search for you. But it's worth an extra click to be sure."

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Notes to editors
(1)    Booking.com, Hotels.com and Expedia did make the full cost clear on the search results page, though Hotels.com and Expedia showed extra fees in the local currency. On Ebookers the full cost was harder to spot – it couldn’t be seen by default on the search results page and the only way to check was to click a button next to a warning about “tax and fee info”, in which case a pop-up window would appear setting out extra charges.

(2)    When looking on comparison sites, MSE looked at the cheapest price quoted for each hotel and checked whether it was actually the full cost you'd pay with that broker. On Trivago, the cheapest price included all taxes and resort fees only one out of five times. On Skyscanner, it did so two out of four times, on TravelSupermarket, three out of five times and Kayak, three out of four times.