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Marriott has taken a lot of heat for being less than transparent when it comes to resort fees. Travelers who find a room rate that fits their budget are routinely surprised to see the all-in price jump 10%, 15%, 20%, or even more once the taxes and fees are included on the final booking page.
While those pesky resort fees aren't going away, Marriott has recently added a search option that allows customers to search for rooms and view the total price during the search process, instead of at the very end of the booking process.
Booking on the Marriott Website
Here is how it works. Let's say that you are looking to make a quick trip to Las Vegas. When searching for room availability on Marriott's website, the search results present this way:
You can see that the regular rate is $300/night above. However, once you select the room and begin the checkout process, the price increases rather dramatically.
In this case, there are additional taxes and fees that increase the final price of the room by 28%. That's a big enough increase to burden any budget, and this has never been a welcome surprise to Marriott customers.
“Show Rates With Taxes and All Fees”
As first pointed out by God Save The Points, Marriott recently introduced a new feature that brings transparency to the booking process. There is now an easy option to view actual room rates that include all taxes and fees.
If you run the same search as we did above for a hotel room in Las Vegas, Marriott now offers a button that allows you to see the total price of the room in the search results. Check this box and you get the final room price, right on the search results page!
This also works for a general search where you get a long list of multiple properties. Just check this new “show all rates with taxes and fees” button and you will get a comprehensive list of properties with the all-in prices. This makes comparing properties much easier!
This new feature should avoid some of the stress and frustration that comes from finding out late in the search process that the actual price of your desired room is much more than you planned for. While all hotels have taxes, some of the Marriott resort fees can be as high as $95 per day. While those resort fees aren't going anywhere anytime soon, at least you'll know upfront what you'll be paying.
Booking on the Marriott Bonvoy App
This same feature is available on the most up-to-date version of the Marriott Bonvoy app. Once you start your search, you can click on the filter button (in red below).
That filter menu will allow you to select the option “Show rates with taxes and all fees”.
Our Take
More transparency is always a win for the customer, and Marriott has done a nice job adding this new feature. While this feature is not available for award bookings—which can still come with taxes and fees—this time-saving option is nice for considering paid bookings. It's especially nice for those of us who may be doing multiple aspirational searches during these tough travel times!
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Has the lack of pricing transparency ever generated more sales?
This is very useful. We don’t need to adjust resort fee to get the final price when comparing hotels in the same area.
This is a good idea. Otherwise it’s almost as bad as buying flights with miles only to see huge cash taxes added on afterwards.
A welcome move to transparency , but getting rid of nonsense destination, resort, or urban “fees” still needs to happen. Just one price for the room.
Indeed, removing the nonsensical fees would bring in more customers when the pandemic is over.
This is a wonderful feature! I Hope Hilton will do the same!!
I’ve never understood why airfare usually includes all taxes and fees, while hotels are free to deceive and play unfair games with taxes and fees.
Don’t forget to call out rental car companies.
I would assume this issue is present with more companies than just Marriott. I hear a lot of complaints about the resort fees and taxes for Marriott branded properties, but in my experience it doesn’t matter who I’ve booked with because there have always been surprise taxes and fees on the final booking step (this goes for car rentals too). Until now I’ve always just accepted it as a necessary evil if I wanted to travel. So does everyone’s rejoicing at this new feature mean that hiding the fees until the end of the booking process is not, in all actuality, a common occurrence?
Can you do a dummy booking on sites such as hotels.com to find out the sneaky “hidden” fees in advance?
I think with hotels, you’ll usually see the final price before submitting your reservation. It’s the fact that that price isn’t shown when you do the normal room rate search that’s aggravating.
I was thinking the exact same thing. This practice is pervasive and not at all limited to Marriott. Nor do I even think they were the worst offenders.
Isn’t it a strange world we live in when we get excited about companies being transparent and doing what they should have always done.
Oh I like this! I know I always wonder whats coming at the end for a car rental and hotel booking. Now at least booking with Marriott I’ll have a little less stress on that. I will guess it is per night then? Are we able to just total it from the rate we see on the search page?
I haven’t found it on a Marriott page, are you able to see before you book how many points you’ll get from the booking? Or are you having to calculate it yourself?
This is long overdue. In many countries the total price must be displayed up front by law.. honestly there’s no good reason not to just do this by default!
This feature will be tremendously useful for North American bookings.
this is good to hear really with more companys would do the same
This is a positive step! I’ve noticed that Air Canada also has a default setting to hide taxes and fees unless you click the “show prince with fees included” button when searching.
Wow! That’s one thing I normally appreciate about the airlines. The price you see is your final price – which actually the final price is usually lower because it rounds up on the search screen.
It’s only been that way with airlines since 2012 when a US DOT rule took effect. I remember a decade ago seeing ads for air tickets that screamed “Only $19!” but once all required taxes and fees were included was more like $119.
Marriott isn’t being generous here, they’re trying to get ahead of it so that a similar regulation isn’t forced on them.
Yes. It’s very easy to only remember when the federal government messes up, since that’s usually what the media covers. There are just as many instances, in fact more I’d suggest, where they have a positive impact, as they did here with this consumer-friendly regulation.