The rate quoted was $147 per night which is not bad for a nice large room at the Marriott. The thing is, this rate did not include any taxes because each city and state has the different rates and different taxes.
The hotel was in Woodland Hills, California so they have one set of taxes. I paid $20.58 for the room tax, $2.94 for a tax labeled a "TMD Tax" which is some sort of California tax and $0.22 for a California tourist tax. So all in all I paid $170.74. This is a great exercise in figuring out the tax rates for room tax and the other taxes.
A few years ago, I stayed at this same hotel and they included an energy tax to cover the rolling brownouts the state was experiencing. So that was even more. Another time, I stayed at a place classified as a resort in San Diego. When I went to check out they had the usual room tax, the TMD tax, and the California tourist tax but then they had a resort tax and a tax on the resort tax. I always look at my bill to check things out, When I saw the tax I didn't recognize, I asked them about it and the front desk staff had to run to the accounting department to get an answer. It took them about 20 minutes to get an. answer.
One way to check tax rates out is to look at various booking sites. For instance, Booking.com tells you the base rate and that it excludes the taxes while giving the rate. For instance, I looked at a hotel near LAX with a daily rate of $215 which includes breakfast but not the 16.2 percent so students can use that to calculate the actual daily rate including tax. If you reserve the room, it will give you the absolute total you'll pay including all taxes. The other thing is that this site will also tell you if there are any "cleaning fees" that will be included in the daily rate.
Another site, Hotels.com lists the hotel, the daily rate and the total rate on the page that lists the price. I chose a hotel and they had a link to the price break down so you'd know the exact amount for the daily rate, the taxes and fees, and the final price but it doesn't give percentages. In addition, if you want the privilege to be able to cancel later, you have to pay an extra $10 for the ability whereas many of the places with Booking.com, you have that given freely.
Expedia.com handles the prices the same way that Hotels.com but has free cancellation up to a certain point which is nice. Then there is Kayak.com which lists several different websites and their prices. There is a wide variety of prices for the room I looked at but some services had free cancellation but each had the percent of tax listed as a percent. If you take the room, it gives the actual amount of tax you will be paying.
These different sites give students a chance to learn how to read them, figure out what the final price is and look for things like "Is there breakfast included in the final price?" Sometimes I choose a place that serves breakfast because the price different isn't that great and it works well but if the room with breakfast is like $30.00 more per day I might choose the other option so I don't have to pay as much. There are so many things one can have students do with these sights including a compare and contrast activity that requires them to make conclusions and use higher order thinking skills.
I tend to use Booking.com so much because I know if how the taxes break down, cleaning charges, resort fees, etc and I know the final price. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.
No comments:
Post a Comment