Hotels hiding nonrefundable fees
More and more often, hotels are offering more nonrefundable rooms, and customers are falling for them without even noticing
Nonrefundable room rates used to be a rarity, reserved for special events or five-star resorts at the peak of high season. But after the pandemic, the hotel industry started to tighten the refund rules.
Key takeaways
- Experts say a seller’s market for hotel rooms, spurred by strong consumer demand and a need to make up for several lean pandemic years, pushed hotels to increase the number of nonrefundable rooms;
- Hotel revenue managers have looked on with envy as the airline industry created highly profitable “basic” economy-class fares that were nonrefundable and couldn’t be changed;
- Making matters worse, online travel sites sometimes bury the terms and conditions of a nonrefundable hotel room three or four clicks into a reservation.
Get the full story at The Washington Post