If enough travelers stopped paying the travel industry’s infuriating surcharges and fees, would the unwanted add-ons simply disappear? Would extra charges for checked luggage, ticket change fees and mandatory hotel resort fees vanish into thin air?
Experts say they should. Readers such as Jan Jacobs wish they would.
“You are in a position to start a movement called ‘Stop paying the travel extortion fees,’ ” says Jacobs, a retired librarian from Tempe, Ariz. “Your voice could start such a movement. I hope you will.”
Jacobs saw my recent story about the most outrageous travel fees. “They should be illegal,” she says.
They are not, but efforts to regulate them have stalled. Never fear, say some travel insiders. If enough travelers refused to pay, then the fees would stop.
Really?
The truth isn’t so simple. Yes, one or two travel surcharges have been dropped because people refused to pay them. For example, US Airways began charging for soft drinks a few years ago,
