We’re updating our booking sites to align with the FTC’s latest “junk fee” regulations. These changes will make pricing more transparent for guests, streamline the reservation process, and give your team greater control when contracting hotels.
Guests who access your booking sites will be rerouted to an updated and optimized booking workflow. This is available for your team as well by selecting the “Guest Booking Site” option from the overflow menu. The existing Booking Site has been made available to your team only and renamed the “Admin Booking Site”. This admin booking site will maintain the functionality only available to admins such as bypassing hotel cutoff dates.
For any clients using the live inventory booking site, this option will remain accessible by clicking the “Guest Booking Site” after the redirect date is set in the event settings. Optimized Guest Booking Site:
Transparent Pricing at Booking:
Guests will now see the full cost—including all required fees—clearly displayed upfront and throughout the booking process.
Smarter Booking Flow:
Guests will now see the full cost—including all required fees—clearly displayed upfront and throughout the booking process. The updated flow now collects occupancy details earlier, helping drive faster, more accurate bookings. This also enables better fee calculations tied to occupancy or room count.
Enhanced Hotel Search:
The hotel results list has been redesigned with improved filters and sorting tools, making it easier for guests to find the right fit.
Improved Hotel Pages:
Hotel detail pages now display room availability and configurations more clearly. For clients using waitlists, guests can now book multiple waitlisted rooms in a single transaction to simplify the experience.
Notes on Group Blocks:
- The workflow for creating a group block will not be changed as part of this release.
- Booking a reservation within a group block will use the updated booking workflow. This means that the initial page a user will interact with when booking in a group block will be one asking them the dates of their stay, the number of rooms they are going to book, and the number of guests in each of those rooms. To see this for yourself, you can book a reservation in a group block from an incognito tab to impersonate being a guest. Otherwise, your team can continue to use the legacy booking workflow for booking in a group block while they are logged in.
Fee Transparency Improvements:
We’ve made two key updates to improve fee transparency for both your team and your guests. Resort fees are now clearly displayed as separate line items when not included in the contracted rate, helping avoid confusion at checkout. In addition, you can now apply per-occupant guest fees during contracting, giving you more control and accuracy when setting up room blocks. Both types of fees will be clearly communicated throughout the booking workflow and in guest-facing reservation summaries.
Resort Fees Displayed Separately:
While resort fees have always been supported, they will now appear as separate line items during checkout and in financial summaries when not included in the contracted rate. These fees will be clearly marked as payable at the hotel. (Reminder: You can enter resort fees under a hotel’s Property Policies section.)
Resort Fees marked as “Not included” will add a new line item to the checkout page and reservation summary. Resort Fees marked as “Included” are assumed to be built into the contracted rate and therefore will not be represented as a separate line item to guests.
The details of the resort fees will be included in the policies of the booking workflow and reservation summary for guests to reference.
New: Per-Occupant Fees:
You can now apply occupancy-based guest fees at the time of contracting —either by hotel or by your team. These fees can be assigned to individual room blocks and will automatically carry into the hotel setup within your event.
Guest fees can be edited or removed from room blocks as needed. If included, they will be displayed to guests throughout the booking process, alongside other applicable fees.
Guest fees are calculated based on either the number of occupants selected during the booking process for each room, or the number of guests who are added by name, whichever is greater. The details of the guest fees will be included in the policies of the booking workflow and reservation summary for guests to reference.
