Travel companies are still publishing misleading prices for holidays and plane trips on their websites, the consumers’ association Consumentenbond said on Friday.

The association looked at 60 websites offering flights, bus trips and holiday houses and found every one included extras in the final bill, such as ‘cleaning costs’ and ‘customer service taxes’.
In half the cases ‘reservation costs’ were not made clear and on 16 sites, cancellation insurance was automatically included as an extra. On some sites, payments can only be made by credit card and this also costs extra, the association said.
The biggest hidden fee was an ‘unheard of’ €59 customer service charge’ levied by the World Ticket Centre, the association’s director Bart Combée told the Volkskrant.
The travel industry pledged two years ago to move away from this sort of practice, Nos television said. The association has now opened a hotline where consumers can report hidden charges.

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