I just went ahead and booked all cancelable Airbnb apartments. I averaged around 150 a night in Brussels, Paris, and Ypres with all fees added in. Lifts in every place, washing machine, kitchen. The Paris one has two balconies in the Marais and to make my husband happy the metro close by. Brussels one is across from the Marriott where they ice skate outside our window. I am happy. So much cheaper than our accommodations in July in Maine, Vermont, NY, and Pa.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice this stuff. I generally stay in hotels, never got on board with the condo and private room rental program. I like hotels -- front desk, flexible check-in and -out, liberal and transparent cancellation policies, breakfast, and reliability. You don't hear about hotel room scams very often.

It looks like the hospitality industry has joined the cell phone industry and the airline industry with "let's fool the customer trickle pricing".

By the way, have you ever tried to actually contact booking.com? It is absolutely impossible. They simply don't have a customer service function. All you get is a bunch of FAQ's. I wanted to tell them what I thought of their condo pricing routine but there was no way.

I contacted the Booking.com Help Center a few years ago. There's a ? at the top of the page with an option to contact them via their How Can We Help form. They responded to my issue via email. It wasn't all that helpful, as they didn't really address my problem, but you might want to give it a try.

Thanks but I tried that and it doesn't work for contact. Now it just takes you to a page that shows your current reservations and FAQ's. They really don't want to talk to you unless you're an owner / lister. And I can't imagine what it's like doing business with them from the other side of the table.

Book on Expedia if this is such a disappointment IAfter I found "resort fee" added to a local hotel I had always booked on Hotels.com I went to Expedia and got a better rate.
AirBnB started charging a fee a few years ago that got everyone all up in the air. It's a business and supply and demand will drive it

Speaking of Expedia, I've noticed since the pandemic that you can no longer speak to a person. Back in 2019 I contacted them to ask questions prior to booking and they were quite helpful. Now online chats are automated, there doesn't seem to be a way to speak to a human. You're asked multiple choice questions which lead to your booking and then more questions. There doesn't seem to be any help for those who don't have bookings. When I call, I get a recording that is completely unhelpful and refers back to the website. It's maddening.

I've just made several Air BNB bookings for an optimistically planned trip to Switzerland. I've only booked accommodation with free cancellation policies. I just heard from a host today that is willing to extend the free cancellation until date of arrival, should COVID present problems. That was a nice surprise.

One thing I have noticed on the Marriott site and I also believe on the Hilton site is that they now have a box you can check that shows pricing including all taxes and fees. That is the most helpful function they have put in in a long time.

Hotels.com is owned by Expedia, by the way. I found out that there is also some strange "partner" listing arrangement. Just because you book a listing on the hotels.com website, it isn't necessarily hotels.com that manages the content or handles the complaints. It was a long and only moderately interesting story including being put on the wrong bus out of Kruger by the tour coordinators, lollygagging at the local airport near Kruger where about 10 were dropped off, since no one realized there were a bunch of us on the wrong bus (including some who were in danger of missing international flights), a roadblock due to an accident, the driver taking the wrong detour, a missed/rebooked flight to Cape Town (changes managed on the bus by the tour coordinator who fortunately was on the same bus), a late arrival and the night clerk later lying in response to my "Ticket" that I was not staying there alone hence the extra breakfast fee. (Too bad for him the two morning clerks remembered me!)

I eventually pursued it once back home, but could not resolve it using the hotels.com chat function when I was on site. Moral of the story is bring a printed copy of your booking if you expect to get "freebies" and save your receipts!