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How far would you go to avoid a travel fee? You might be shocked

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How far would you go to avoid a travel fee? You might be shocked

Christopher Elliott
 |  Special to USA TODAY

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  • Travelers are finding creative ways to avoid increased fees from airlines and hotels.
  • Some travelers are packing minimally to avoid baggage fees, while others are choosing less desirable seats or accommodations.
  • Experts believe that the focus on ancillary revenue by travel companies is negatively impacting customer satisfaction.

What would you do to avoid an annoying travel fee? 

Jodi Blodgett is so sick of all the extras that she’s stopped flying.

“I avoid travel fees by driving,” she says. Not only can she skirt ridiculous fees for luggage, but she also doesn’t have to pony up more cash for the seat assignment and other junk fees the airlines charge her.

How far would you go? Would you pack less? Skip a nice hotel? 

Would you lie?

After an exhausting record year of travel, maybe we’re all suffering from a little fee fatigue. Travelers are furious – and it’s not just people like Blodget who have sworn off flying. 

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Inflated fees put a damper on summer travel, with more people either staying with friends or family or not traveling at all. Bad service can be costly to a business. The latest National Customer Rage Survey, citing record consumer dissatisfaction, estimates that companies are risking $887 billion a year in future revenue, up from $494 billion in 2020.

You can’t always avoid flying. Blodgett, who works as a photographer in Webster, Massachusetts, said it’s easy to reach a client in the tri-state area by car. But for longer distances, you have to head to the airport. 

“Still,” she said, “I go to great lengths.”

Actually, many of us are going to great lengths to avoid these preposterous surcharges.

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Oh, the things we do to avoid fees!

Here are some of the creative ways travelers have been sidestepping fees.

▶ Avoiding luggage fees by packing like a minimalist. This year, with almost every major U.S. airline jacking up their checked luggage fees, the response from passengers was predictable. “I’m packing minimally and efficiently,” said Daniel Rivera, who runs a property management company in East Rutherford, New Jersey. “I put everything in a single bag that I can stow under the seat in front of me.”

▶ Not paying seat selection fees – and ending up in a middle seat. Kevin Mercier, a project manager for an auto manufacturer in Paris, said he’s taken “extreme” measures to avoid seat selection fees. Not paying them means he ends up in a middle seat, but he’s fine with that. ” I was willing to endure the cramped conditions and lack of privacy because the cost of selecting a preferred seat was substantial,” said Mercier, who is also a travel photographer.

▶ Avoiding hotel resort fees by booking somewhere else. Hotel resort fees are mandatory fees added to your hotel bill after the hotel quotes you a room rate, and sometimes much later. Christian Strange, an insurance agent from Virginia Beach, Virginia, said he won’t darken the door of a hotel that charges a “gotcha” resort fee. On a recent trip to Miami, he skipped the large chain hotel with a resort fee and stayed at a boutique hotel a few blocks from the beach. “The location still allowed me to enjoy the area – but at a fraction of the cost,” he said. He’s not alone. I hear from travelers all the time who say they’ll never stay at a hotel with a resort fee.

These strategies reflect a broader shift in traveler behavior, said Ramzy Ladah, an attorney and frequent air traveler from Las Vegas. 

“People are fed up with being nickel-and-dimed, and they’re pushing back in the only ways they know how,” he said. “It’s about taking back control.”

Would you lie or cheat to avoid a fee?

One of the most intriguing questions is whether travelers would lie or cheat to avoid a fee. What’s a cheat? For a few years, passengers could game Southwest Airlines’ “Early Bird” access to its seats. One traveler would pay extra to board early and then save seats for the rest of the party. That infuriated some passengers. (Alas, Southwest closed that loophole and is now moving to assigned seating, so no more Early Bird cheat-cheats.)

If the Department of Transportation gets its way, airlines would soon be barred from charging fees to assign seats for kids 13 or under next to their parent or accompanying adult. And although passengers must give their birthdays when they buy an airline ticket, I’ve also met plenty of air travelers who have lied about their kids’ ages to bypass these fees.

Resort fees are also easy to avoid with a little insider knowledge. You can use a corporate booking code that allows you to avoid paying the fee. That’s right, corporate travel managers have negotiated these nuisance fees away – but only for their employees. And those with the booking code. (I’m not endorsing this strategy in any way.)

So will passengers bend a fact or two in order to avoid paying a bill? No doubt about it. And the reason is simple: People feel the fees are unfair, and often charged after a travel company quotes them a rate. It’s basically a lie. And they feel that if they’re being lied to, they have a license to lie right back.

But two wrongs don’t make a right. You’re better off avoiding these airlines and hotels than giving them your business.

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Now what happens to these fees?

We’re not in a good place, observers say.

“The proliferation of fees has led to a more complex and less transparent booking process, where the initial price seen by the traveler can be misleading,” said Raymond Yorke, a spokesman for Redpoint Travel Protection. “This has fueled a rise in fee-avoidance behavior as travelers seek to control costs.”

Yorke said it also points to a broader issue within the travel industry where the emphasis on ancillary revenue has overshadowed customer satisfaction. In other words, travel companies care more about money than they do about you.

I know, big surprise.

And despite your creative avoidance strategies, travel companies – particularly airlines – seem more addicted to fees than ever. And they don’t have to stop. There are no laws to prevent them from inventing new surcharges or from increasing existing ones. They don’t have to justify the increases, either. 

Unfortunately, since many travel companies dominate their markets, there’s no meaningful competition. (Again, that’s especially true for U.S. airlines.) So travelers may go to extremes to avoid fees. But in the end, if they want to travel, they’ll have to pay up.

Our fee-avoidance is more than a few money-saving tricks. It’s a form of silent protest against an industry that’s lost its way. Travel should expand our horizons, not shrink our wallets.

Christopher Elliott is an author, consumer advocate, and journalist. He founded Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit organization that helps solve consumer problems. He publishes Elliott Confidential, a travel newsletter, and the Elliott Report, a news site about customer service. If you need help with a consumer problem, you can reach him here or email him at chris@elliott.org.

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