The hotel total price fiasco and Kayak's mobile experiment
Skift Take
Travelers need to see the total price of a hotel room instantly, but online travel agencies and comparison-shopping engines have bowed to competitive pressures.
It's tough to buck the entire online travel industry on hotel-pricing transparency, and Kayak's mobile apps are apparently solitary holdouts, although you have to wonder how long they will maintain this status.
One of the biggest hassles for consumers when shopping online for a hotel stay is that most online travel agencies and travel metasearch engines prominently display a property's base rate, but then you have to click through to the next screen and do a lot of research to gauge varying companies' total prices, including taxes and fees, for the room.
The differences can be substantial.
Kayak now finds itself in a precarious and complicated positi
