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I'm looking for a hotel search site that does the following things:

  1. List the price as "what you pay" including all fees, taxes, surcharges, etc.
  2. Has a map view
  3. Ideally allows to search for "free cancellation"

Background: All my favorite search sites seems to have degraded a lot over the last few years, e.g. hipmunk.com, booking.com, hotels.com. They used to list the actual out of pocket price but now it's getting much more expensive when you get to the payment page, which makes it really hard to compare prices and plan to a budget. That's partially driven by the idiotic "resort fee" that many hotels have started charging. I had extreme case on hotwire.com today: advertised rate $74/night, actual price to pay was $139. Almost double.

Also, since maybe 2015/2016 the difference between "free cancellation" and "prepaid" has gone way up from almost nothing to a substantial percentage of the rate. That, again, makes it hard to search for a "free cancellation" rate, since only the pre-paid ones will show up in the comparison.

Any tip for a website or some other search mechanism that allows comparing "true cost" for "free cancellation" rates would be appreciated.

EDIT Clarifying the question, since there seems to be some confusion. Let's say I have $200, I can spend on a room tonight in Boston. I'd like to see of a list of hotels that I can afford. Currently it's easy enough to see a list of hotels and prices, but the list prices are substantially lower than the actual price and the difference or ratio isn't constant either. For example, for tonight on hipmunk.com

  1. "Taj Boston": lists at $170 but costs $225
  2. "Westin Copley" lists at $180 but costs only $205.

So I have to always click through to the payment page to get the actual price and it's cumbersome to find hotels that match my price target.

hippietrail
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Hilmar
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2 Answers2

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Expedia. Usually what you pay in advance is the total amount without any more additional fees. If there is anything else to pay, it's written in the order confirmation. When you select the room you also get the comparison between different options: free-cancellation, not free, etc..

Val
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I suspect what you are seeing is the room price separate from the various addon fees. This is common practice and in my experience, and since different properties and different locations have different rules, there's not a lot you can do about it.

For example, (from their own website) tonight at the Taj, Boston has a Deluxe King Bed Interior View, Non-refundable rate, which includes the statement:

"Rate excludes all applicable taxes and facility fee charge. 30USD/day facility fee includes WIFI, access to PressReader, domestic phone calls, 24-hour Fitness Center, Business Center, Morning Coffee Station, Turn down, and shoe shine"

(there's no mention of what to do if you don't want or need any of those facilities.)

The booking page then presents:

Rate Total:      $ 159.20 
Sales Tax:       $   9.07 
City Tax:        $   9.55 
Occupancy Tax:   $   4.37 
City Hotel Fees: $  34.34 
=========================
Room Total:      $ 216.54
Nick
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