Live Event Promoters, Hotels, And Rental Sites Need To Disclose Extra Fees Up Front, FTC Says 

This week, the Federal Trade Commission  stated that it will be requiring hotels, vacation rental platforms, and live event promoters to disclose any extra fees up front when they list prices online for their services, according to reports from AP.

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In their announcement, the FTC stated that consumers of these industries often see one price in advertisements and listings, but are then hit with extra hidden fees such as “resort fees, cleaning fees, processing fees and other extra charges,” that make their total price significantly higher than initially expected. 

“People deserve to know up front what they’re being asked to pay without worrying that they’ll later be saddled with mysterious fees that they haven’t budgeted for and can’t avoid,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said.

This new requirement is scheduled to go into effect in about 120 days. 

In a statement of support for the new rule, Ticketmaster stated that they have “long advocated for all-in pricing as a nationwide industry standard, and we’re pleased to see the FTC mandate the necessary changes to make ticket-buying more transparent for fans.”

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Four out of five FTC commissioners voted in favor of the rule. 

The FTC will now require hospitality and ticketing businesses to very clearly disclose the total cost of their pricing to customers, including all mandatory fees. For certain businesses that exclude taxes or shipping fees from their advertised prices, they must disclose those fees before customers enter their payment information, according to AP.

Reports state that the FTC is estimating this new requirement will save US consumers 53 million hours per year of time spent searching for the total price of their hospitality and/or events. 

Back in 2022, the FTC began the process of creating and implementing this rule by asking the public for their input as to whether or not a full fee-disclosure agreement would help their process and if they believed it would eliminate unfair pricing overall. More than 12,000 people commented.