All of this wouldn’t really matter if our businesses quoted prices “out of the door” as they do in Europe. This is one my biggest personal peeves… Here in the good old US, when a hotel quotes you, say, $99 per room per night, you don’t really know what the total cost will be when you check out. They add sales tax, hotel tax, city fees, etc., etc., and hotels take advantage of this lack of transparency to tack on “resort fees” and other 100%-profit add-ons. Your total cost may be anywhere in the $115 to $150 range for a “$99 rate.”
In good old Europe, and most other regions, if a hotel quotes you 80 euros for the room, that’s exactly what you pay. When you see the bill in the morning, they may itemize the total into room rate, VAT, gratuity (services), resort fee, etc., etc., but I don’t really care because my total will be exactly the 80 euros I was quoted.
Why can’t we have that? As a country, we have institutionalized the practice of “hidden prices and fees.”
