Transparency is the order of the day — literally. On Dec. 17, 2024, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a new rule that would require hotels, vacation rental platforms and event ticketing sites to disclose all mandatory fees upfront. The bipartisan junk fees rule, expected to take effect around April 2025, requires that these providers show the total cost of stays or event tickets upfront, without adding unexpected charges like resort, convenience, cleaning or service fees later in the booking process.
Hotels often hide resort fees until the final booking stage, a tactic to entice interest with seemingly low prices. These fees often run an extra $20 to $50 per night and in most cases, there’s no way to refuse or opt out of the resort fee — even when you’re sure you won’t use the resort’s facilities for anything other than a room.
The FTC estimates the junk fees rule will save shoppers up to 53 million hours per year of wasted time trying to decipher actual prices of lodging and event tickets. Here’s what the new rule could mean for you.
Clear pricing for hotel or vacation rental stays
When the final rule takes effect, you’ll no longer find unexpected resort fees, cleaning charges or other mandatory add-ons after selecting a hotel. The full cost of your stay, including all required fees, will have to be displayed upfront, making it easier to compare prices.
The new rule doesn’t prohibit any type of fee, but rather requires that the most prominent advertised price is the all-in total price, including any fees. Now that hotels won’t be able to hide travel fees near the end of the booking process, you’ll be able to more easily compare prices at a glance.
Under the rule, businesses can exclude certain allowable fees, such as taxes and shipping, if they disclose the “nature, purpose, identity, and amount of those fees” before consumers agree to pay. For example, if a business excludes taxes in the advertised price, it needs to show the total taxes owed before the consumer enters their payment information, according to the FTC.
Although the rule hasn’t yet taken effect, some companies are already moving toward more price transparency. Airbnb, for example, which was known for tacking on large cleaning fees during the booking process, now makes it easier to view the full price of stays upfront.
Transparent costs for event tickets
It’s fun to travel for a live event — but decidedly not fun to pay enormous fees at the final stage of booking.
Hidden fees on event tickets came under scrutiny in 2022 when Ticketmaster prematurely oversold tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. The Justice Department brought an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster which targeted, in part, “seemingly endless” fees.
When the new junk fees rule takes effect, companies will have to display these fees at the start of the booking process. As with hotel and vacation rental bookings, fees like taxes and shipping can be excluded from the advertised price, but need to be disclosed before the consumer enters their payment information.
Whether you’re traveling to catch a show or having a night out close to home, this removes a long-disliked barrier to transparency in ticket prices for concerts, sports events and shows. And again, this makes it simpler to budget for events without overpaying.
What’s next?
Although the final rule has been announced, it has not yet been published in the Federal Register, the U.S. federal government’s daily publication that publishes rules, proposed rules, executive orders and other documents. Once it’s published, it will take effect 120 days later — likely around April 2025.
The junk fees rule has been in the works for a while. In 2022, the FTC requested public input about deceptive pricing tactics, and received over 12,000 comments. A second round of comments in October 2023 yielded another 60,000 comments.
Although the new junk fees rule focuses on hotels, vacation rentals and event ticketing sites, the FTC says it “will use its law enforcement authority to continue to rigorously pursue bait-and-switch pricing tactics, such as drip pricing and misleading fees, in other industries through case-by-case enforcement.”
