Why the same hotel room shows two prices on two sites

On 16 September 2026 we priced 40 Las Vegas hotels for the same 3-night stay for two adults, through the wholesale rate feed booking sites buy from, and read every rate plan each hotel returned.

The median fee that an omitting plan left out was $119.99 over the stay, before the tax the hotel charges on it.

Before we corrected for it, our own results showed a resort fee on 4 of 40 hotels, because the cheapest plan at a hotel was so often the one without it. After the correction, 33 of 40 did. The hotels had not changed; the line the sort was reading had.

A hotel sells its rooms through more than one channel, and each returns rate plans in its own format. Some itemise the resort fee as a line collected at the desk, some fold it into the rate, and some do not mention it. A booking site buying from the feed receives them side by side, for one hotel.

The room is the same and so is the fee, because the hotel charges it whichever channel sold the room. What differs is whether the number the site was handed had the fee in it. That is why the gap between two sites can be exactly the fee: nobody found a cheaper room.

A cheapest-first sort ranks on the number it is handed. A plan that omitted the fee is lower by exactly the fee, so it comes first among a hotel’s plans, and a hotel whose cheapest plan omitted the fee ranks above one whose cheapest plan stated it. The sort is not broken. It is faithfully ranking a number that is short by the fee.

And it is selective. A hotel with a large fee and one omitting plan looks cheaper than a hotel with a small fee and complete plans, so the ranking rewards the largest omission most.

When a rate plan omits a fee that the same hotel’s other plans itemise, we count it. The hotel charges the fee whichever plan sold the room, so a plan that left it out has not escaped it. We add the fee to that plan’s total, rank on the corrected total, and label the line as inferred, so you can see it was not on the plan itself.

Three rules keep that honest. A fee is inferred only when at least two other plans at the hotel itemise the same amount, because one plan is not evidence. Where every plan is silent, we stay silent, because silence is not a fee. And a plan reporting a figure far below its siblings is read as having itemised the tax on the fee and dropped the fee; we add the shortfall and state both figures.

We never charge an inferred fee. It is the hotel’s, collected at the desk, and the result says so. How we check a fee has the rules in full.

The FTC’s rule on unfair or deceptive fees (16 CFR Part 464) took effect on 12 May 2025. It requires a seller to include every mandatory fee in the total it displays, and lets government taxes be shown separately.

It governs the display, not the data sellers buy, and the split we measured is in that data, about 16 months after the rule took effect. A site that sorts on the feed’s number and displays it faithfully can still put the omitting plan first, because as far as that site can tell, the plan has no fee. Somebody has to notice that the plans disagree, and the rule does not require anyone to.

Assume the one with the fee in it, then check. The hotel’s own website states the fee, whether tax is added and who collects it. Our Las Vegas page lists what each hotel states, linked and dated, and the calculator totals it for your stay.

Read the fee line, not the total. A listing that names the fee and its amount has told you the truth even when its total sits above a competitor’s. The Las Vegas guide lists which hotels charge and which do not, and What is a resort fee covers the charge itself.