Booking.com just paid 9.5 million dollars to settle a price display lawsuit in Texas. Learn how to maintain compliance in your displayed prices with these tips from Triptease.
The introduction of new “Junk Fee” regulations by the US Federal Trade Commission in May 2025 created a stir in the hospitality industry, with hotels in the US and beyond rushing to adapt the way they display prices online. And no one, not even major OTAs, is above the new regulations: in August 2025, Booking Holdings agreed to a $9.5 million settlement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office over its junk fee practices.
The company was accused of using “drip pricing” by advertising low base rates for hotels and then adding mandatory charges like resort, amenity, or destination fees only at checkout. The lawsuit also alleged that Booking obscured its mandatory fees at checkout by grouping them with funds owed to the government.
Booking denied wrongdoing, but the settlement requires it to fully disclose all mandatory fees upfront to align with the Federal Trade Commission’s rule.
This is the largest Texas state-level settlement to date against an online travel agency for deceptive pricing, following earlier actions by the state against hotel giants such as Marriott, Hilton, and Choice. And while we’re in favor of holding OTAs to account, this is also a wake-up call to hotels in the US or with US customers: these rules are being enforced, and non-compliance could mean legal action and potentially steep fines.
How to make sure you’re compliant with the FTC’s ruling
While unlikely to result in payouts of over $9 million, fines or legal challenges would be a major headache for any hotel. Properties need to ensure that they’re fully compliant with all current regulations, and keep an eye out for any further developments. Here are the steps we’d recommend for hotels looking to avoid any complications.
1. Ensure that your advertised prices and your booking engine breakdown follow best practices
Ultimately this is all about the way prices are set up in your booking engine. So if you have any doubt at all about your pricing configurations and the rates you’re advertising, start from there.
Your booking engine should be able to outline the specific steps you can take to display prices in a compliant way. If in doubt, we’ve put together some key examples of how hotels are displaying their rates in a way that’s compliant with the new regulations.
2. Make sure your advertising partners and tech providers support your new pricing structure
Once you’ve ensured that your booking engine price display setup is compliant, your next step should be aligning advertising channels such as metasearch and onsite price-check widgets.
You need to check and make sure the partners you work with can support the pricing structure you’ve implemented. This could happen automatically, you might need to adjust some configuration, or maybe you need to have a conversation about exactly what’s possible.
Here at Triptease, we’ve rolled out updates across our platform, including our metasearch and price matching solutions, to ensure that we can support hotels without causing any regulatory issues.
3. Keep communication lines open
Checking in and notifying partners of any changes to your pricing structure is the easiest way to ensure that you’re doing everything by the book.
As these laws are fairly new, you might want to test a few different ways of displaying your taxes and fees to see what aligns most with your strategy and creates the best customer experience(for example, whether to include state-mandated taxes in advertised rates).
If you do make any continuous improvements, be sure to okay changes with your booking engine and marketing partners, so they can be sure to surface rates accordingly.
The bottom line
Hotels and travel platforms alike are under growing, legally enforceable pressure to provide transparent and upfront pricing. It’s of utmost importance that hotels stay on top of this, and that their partners and tech providers help them do so.
If you have any questions about your pricing setup, how to comply with the newest regulations, or how Triptease can help, our team of direct booking experts is here to help.
Genevieve Horchler is a product marketing manager at Triptease. Connect with Genevieve on LinkedIn.
