Hotel resort fee tracking: mandatory fees and drip pricing on public pages

Step

Search result, property page, room selection or price summary. The audit compares the same stay across these steps.

Headline price

The first price shown, and whether it is per night or per stay.

Fee name, raw

Exactly as displayed, plus your mapped category (resort, destination, cleaning, service, other).

Fee basis and amount

Per room per night, per person per night or per stay, and the currency it is charged in.

Pay now or at the property

Fees collected on arrival or departure are still mandatory charges under the UK guidance; flag where they are paid.

Taxes, separately

Government taxes and levies in their own column, since US rules treat them differently from fees.

Total shown and where

The all-in total, the step where it first appeared, and whether it is more prominent than the base rate.

Evidence

URL, timestamp, exit country, stay parameters and a hash of the stored page or screenshot.

1. 01

   Fix the stay definition

   One fixed search per property: dates, nights, adults, rooms. Fees that scale per person only show up when occupancy is stated, so use two adults unless you are testing occupancy on purpose.

2. 02

   Walk the steps on one exit

   Hold a sticky session for the whole sequence, so every step is the same visitor from the same market. Stop at the price summary that precedes the guest-details form.

   Record each step of one stay, stop before guest details23 linescopy

   from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwrightimport hashlib, json, timePROXY = {"server": "http://proxy.arcproxies.io:8000", "username": "USERNAME_pool-arcfast_country-de_session-k3f9a1x2_sesstime-10", "password": "PASSWORD"}def capture(page, step: str) -> dict:    html = page.content()    return {"step": step, "url": page.url, "ts": time.time(),            "sha256": hashlib.sha256(html.encode()).hexdigest()}with sync_playwright() as p:    browser = p.chromium.launch(proxy=PROXY)    page = browser.new_page()    trail = []    page.goto("https://hotel.example/search?checkin=2026-12-04&nights=2&adults=2")    trail.append(capture(page, "search"))    page.click("a.property-link >> nth=0")    trail.append(capture(page, "property"))    page.click("button.select-room >> nth=0")    trail.append(capture(page, "price_summary"))   # stop here: no guest details    page.screenshot(path="price_summary.png", full_page=True)    print(json.dumps(trail, indent=2))    browser.close()

3. 03

   Extract fees into a fixed schema

   Parse each step into headline price, fee lines, tax lines and total. Map fee names to your categories and keep the raw label beside the mapping.

4. 04

   Score the trail

   For each stay, compare the headline price with the final pre-payment total. Flag any mandatory fee that was absent from an earlier step, and any total shown less prominently than the base rate.

5. 05

   Re-check and archive

   Re-run flagged stays from a fresh session a few days later. Persistent findings with full evidence are what a compliance team or an editor can act on.

http://USERNAME_pool-arcfast_country-us_session-k3f9a1x2_sesstime-10:PASSWORD@proxy.arcproxies.io:8000

Prices are list prices in EUR, excl. VAT. Volume discounts apply automatically at checkout — full ladder on the pricing page.