Book a hotel room advertised at $250 a night, and by the time you reached checkout, the total had often crept to $310 or more. A “resort fee” here, a “destination amenity charge” there. Concert tickets pulled the same trick: a $95 seat ballooned past $130 once “service” and “convenience” fees appeared in the cart. Millions of travelers and concertgoers learned to expect the bait-and-switch, but few had any recourse.
That changed on May 12, 2025, when the Federal Trade Commission’s Junk Fees Rule went into effect. The rule requires hotels, short-term rentals, and live-event ticket sellers to display the total price, including every mandatory fee, the first time a consumer sees a listing. It does not cap what any business can charge. It simply forces the real number into the open from the start.
How the rule works
The regulation, codified at 16 CFR Part 464, targets a pricing tactic the FTC calls “drip pricing”: showing a low base price early in the shopping process, then layering on non-optional charges one screen at a time until the buyer feels too invested to walk away.
Under the rule, any price a consumer encounters first, whether in a search result, an online ad, or on a booking page, must reflect the full amount the consumer is required to pay. The only permitted exclusion is government-imposed taxes calculated at checkout. Optional add-ons like parking, seat upgrades, or travel insurance may still be offered separately, but they must be clearly labeled as optional and cannot be preselected in a way that inflates the apparent baseline.
Vague labels such as “convenience fee” or “facility charge” are not banned outright, but they can no longer disguise charges that every guest or ticket buyer must pay. If a fee is mandatory, its dollar amount must be folded into the displayed price from the start.
The size of the problem the rule was built to fix
The FTC did not pick these two industries at random. A 2018 Government Accountability Office study of the ticket market found that primary-market sellers charged total fees averaging 27 percent of a ticket’s face value, while secondary-market platforms averaged 31 percent. No comparable federal study has been published since, and industry analysts say the post-pandemic surge in live-event demand pushed those percentages even higher.
On the hotel side, the FTC’s own economic analysis during the rulemaking concluded that separating mandatory charges from posted room rates raises consumer search costs without producing offsetting benefits for buyers. Travelers who believed they were comparison-shopping on price were often comparing incomplete numbers, discovering the true cost only after investing time and personal information in the booking process.
The FTC finalized the rule in December 2024 on a 3-2 vote in which one Republican commissioner joined the two Democratic commissioners in favor, capping a rulemaking process that began with an advance notice in 2022, moved through a formal proposed rule in 2023, and included public hearings in 2024. That bipartisan margin matters: it makes the regulation harder for any single commissioner’s departure to undo.
What consumers should notice now
The most visible change is a more honest first impression. Instead of mentally padding a listed price by 20 to 30 percent to account for likely fees, a shopper should see a single number that closely matches the checkout total. That shift makes it far easier to compare a Marriott listing against a Hilton listing, or a Ticketmaster price against a SeatGeek price, on a genuine apples-to-apples basis.
Some platforms moved in this direction before the rule required it. Airbnb began displaying total prices, including its service fee and cleaning fee, by default in late 2022 after sustained customer complaints. That voluntary shift offers a preview of what the rest of the industry must now do, though Airbnb’s approach still allows hosts to set cleaning fees that vary widely, a practice the FTC rule does not address as long as the total is shown upfront.
The FTC has published staff guidance and FAQs with examples of compliant and noncompliant pricing displays, giving businesses a concrete reference point. Consumers who spot a listing that still buries mandatory fees behind a low base price can file a complaint with the FTC, which the agency has said it will use to prioritize enforcement targets.
Existing reservations and the transition
The rule governs how prices are displayed at the time a consumer shops, not the terms of contracts already completed. Reservations booked before May 12, 2025, under the old pricing format are not retroactively affected. However, any new listing, advertisement, or booking offer shown to consumers after the effective date must comply with the all-in pricing requirement, even if it is for a stay or event that was originally listed before the rule took effect.
Open questions as the rule’s first year wraps up
The rule has been in effect for roughly a year as of June 2026, and several important questions remain unresolved.
Enforcement track record. The FTC has not yet announced a completed enforcement action under the Junk Fees Rule. How aggressively the agency pursues early violators will set the tone for industry-wide compliance. Consumer advocates have urged the commission to move quickly, arguing that a visible penalty against a well-known brand would send a stronger signal than guidance documents alone.
Legal challenges. Hotel and ticketing trade associations criticized earlier drafts of the rule in public comments, warning about compliance costs and arguing that some consumers prefer to see base prices broken out from fees. No federal lawsuit challenging the rule had been filed as of its May 2025 effective date, but the litigation landscape could shift at any point; trade groups or individual companies may still file suit, and any successful challenge could delay or narrow the rule’s reach. The absence of a lawsuit so far does not guarantee the rule will remain intact in its current form.
Impact on smaller operators. Independent bed-and-breakfasts, boutique venues, and regional promoters may face steeper adjustment costs than large chains with dedicated compliance teams. Some smaller operators rely on legacy booking software or third-party ticketing tools that were not designed to display all-in pricing, potentially requiring contract renegotiations or system upgrades.
Effect on actual prices. Transparency does not automatically mean lower costs. Some hotels have responded by folding former resort fees into higher advertised rates, making the total more visible but not necessarily cheaper. Others have trimmed or dropped certain fees, betting that consumers react negatively when they see the full charge stated plainly. The FTC’s economic analysis predicts that all-in pricing should sharpen competition on total cost over time, but it does not forecast specific price levels for any market.
What the rule does not cover
The Junk Fees Rule applies only to live-event ticketing and short-term lodging. It does not reach airlines (governed separately by the Department of Transportation), restaurants, gyms, cable providers, or other industries where hidden fees are common complaints. Several states, including California and Colorado, have enacted their own junk-fee laws with broader scope, and those state rules operate alongside the federal regulation. Consumers in those states may have additional protections beyond what the FTC rule provides.
The rule also does not address dynamic pricing, the practice of adjusting ticket or room prices in real time based on demand. A concert ticket that jumps from $150 to $400 because of high demand is not a junk-fee violation, as long as the $400 price is displayed honestly and includes all mandatory charges. That distinction matters because public frustration with dynamic pricing, particularly in live events, often gets lumped together with frustration over hidden fees. They are separate problems, and only one of them is addressed here.
Why this reshapes how consumers compare hotels and tickets
The Junk Fees Rule is the most significant federal pricing-transparency mandate to hit the hospitality and entertainment industries in decades. Its long-term success hinges on three things: consistent FTC enforcement, the absence of a court order blocking the rule, and genuine compliance rather than creative workarounds that technically satisfy the letter of the regulation while undermining its purpose.
For now, the clearest beneficiary is the person who comparison-shops across multiple platforms before booking a hotel or buying a ticket. That shopper finally gets to compare real numbers. Whether the industry treats this rule as a floor for transparency or a ceiling will reveal a great deal about how online pricing evolves from here.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
