The golden rule of fees: if there are no circumstances under which you won't be charged the fee, then it should instead be incorporated into the base price. This sort of deception should be illegal.
Even if the thing is always expected it should be in the price. Like "gratuities". Just insane, that there is expected level and it is not included and paid through by company by default.
Is there a "food safety fee" for following food safety requirements? Is there a "this building has adequate fire suppression" fee? This is basically a "we follow local labor laws" fee.
The cost of business increasing is not the issue here, although some people here may feel strongly about that. Passing that increase on as a fee is the deception we're discussing.
The cost of doing business should be baked into the overall nightly rate, (which is algorithmic and highly variable already, so there is no excuse not to) so that the price is upfront to the consumer and hotels can be compared apples to apples, rather than the consumer having to unravel whatever hollywood accounting scheme each hotel comes up with to make their rate appear as low as possible.
I don't like the idea of the price of a service being increased during checkout, but it's good that people are shown what part of the price that they pay goes to complying with regulations, city taxes, etc - that information allows them to vote better.
That’s so naive, who says how much complying with labor laws costs? A business owner will lie and say it cost two times as much to gain advantage. Business owners should charge an up front price and if they can’t survive because they’re following the law then they can shut down and find a job. Owning a business isn’t a right bestowed by god.
Yeah and even for the actual taxes this justification is untrue anyway. Nobody hides the price do that users will be like “Oh good, Marriott is treating me right but that damn government is making them add a tax,” they do it to get you past the first few decision points and correctly expect many will just admit defeat on the checkout page.
> who says how much complying with labor laws costs?
Basic accounting? If you used to pay $X for something and a new tax goes into effect that makes it $X * 5% tax, you can hide that into the overall price or be transparent to your customers about why your prices are increasing.
> they can shut down and find a job
Love it. The financial equivalent of "Why should I care about farmers? I buy my food at the store".
> Owning a business isn’t a right
If you're not allowed to independently make a living, but must be a wage slave for a different entity, then none of your other fundamental human rights really matter. The right to start your own business is one of the most fundamental human rights.
>who says how much complying with labor laws costs?
When you run an otherwise stable business and have records going back far enough it's pretty easy to see the "cost" of a any given change in how you run things especially if that change has a labor/materials impact that is pretty isolated and countable.