Travel lawsuits in recent years have concentrated on a handful of consumer-facing fights: hidden fees at checkout, hotel occupancy taxes on booking platform markups, bundled insurance charges, coerced hotel bookings for youth sports, airline fare conspiracies and refund rules, and privacy claims over how booking sites share user data. Some have produced settlements worth tens of millions of dollars; others have reshaped the prices travelers see before they click “book.”
Hidden Fees and the FTC Pricing Rule
The most visible change for travelers came on May 12, 2025, when the Federal Trade Commission’s rule banning bait-and-switch pricing in short-term lodging and live-event ticketing took effect. The rule, finalized on December 17, 2024, by a 4-1 vote, requires businesses to display the total price including all mandatory fees more prominently than any other pricing information whenever they advertise a price. The FTC estimated it would save consumers roughly $11 billion over a decade, and violations carry penalties of up to $51,744 each.1Federal Trade Commission. Federal Trade Commission Announces Bipartisan Rule Banning Junk Ticket Hotel Fees
The rule is still in force. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who dissented from its adoption, has since said he supports rules aligning with “the agency’s traditional role as a cop on the beat,” and the agency has continued using its existing authority against deceptive fee practices in industries the 2025 rule does not cover.2Arnold & Porter. FTC Prioritizes Hidden Fees in Housing Rental Markets Amidst Broader State Scrutiny of Junk Fees New York, California, Tennessee, Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado, and Minnesota have all enacted their own transparent-pricing or hidden-fee laws.
State Lawsuits Against Booking Platforms
States have moved in parallel with the FTC. In August 2025, Booking Holdings, parent of Booking.com, Priceline, and Kayak, agreed to pay $9.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The state alleged the company drew customers in with artificially low room rates and masked the true cost by bundling hotel fees with taxes and showing them only at checkout. Booking Holdings agreed to display those fees upfront and did not admit wrongdoing, saying it settled to “avoid prolonged litigation.”3Business Travel News. Booking Holdings Agrees to $9.5M Settlement in Texas Junk Fees Lawsuit
According to Paxton’s office, the settlement was the largest any state had obtained from an online travel agency over junk fee practices. The office had already reached transparency agreements with Marriott, Omni, Choice Hotels, and Hilton.3Business Travel News. Booking Holdings Agrees to $9.5M Settlement in Texas Junk Fees Lawsuit
Fareportal and “Dark Patterns”
In March 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James secured a $2.6 million settlement from Fareportal, the company behind CheapOair.com and OneTravel.com. The investigation found that since at least 2017, Fareportal had used manipulative design to pressure travelers into booking. The site generated fake low-inventory warnings calibrated to the user’s search: a person looking for one ticket might see “Only 2 tickets left,” while someone searching for two tickets at the same time would see “Only 3 tickets left.”4Office of the New York State Attorney General. Attorney General James Secures $2.6 Million From Online Travel Agency for Deceptive Practices
The site also displayed fabricated “real-time” data about how many people were supposedly viewing a listing, generating random numbers between 28 and 45 regardless of actual traffic. Countdown timers, fake markdowns from invented “original” prices, and misleading fee disclosures rounded out the violations.4Office of the New York State Attorney General. Attorney General James Secures $2.6 Million From Online Travel Agency for Deceptive Practices The settlement required Fareportal to base all inventory, popularity, and pricing claims on accurate, real-time data. The company denied any consumer harm and said most of the cited features had been voluntarily discontinued more than two years before the settlement.5Forbes. New York AG Slaps Online Travel Agency With $2.6 Million Fine for Deception
Travel Insurance: The Travel Guard Class Action
A class action filed in December 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleged that Travel Guard Group, AIG Travel, American International Group, and National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh bundled a hidden, mandatory “assistance fee” for non-insurance services into Travel Guard travel insurance plans without disclosing it to buyers. In Miller et al. v. Travel Guard Group, Inc. et al. (Case No. 21-cv-09751), the plans were sold through channels including Expedia and United Airlines. The complaint said customers saw a single total price, were never told it contained a separate assistance charge, and could not decline that charge.6CaseMine. Miller v. Travel Guard Grp., et al.
The case produced a $23,997,500 settlement, with preliminary approval granted in April 2024 and final approval on December 9, 2024. The defendants did not admit liability.7TravelFeeSettlement.com. Travel Guard Class Action Settlement Eligible class members were California and Washington residents who bought qualifying Travel Guard plans between December 17, 2017, and January 18, 2024, and were charged the bundled assistance fee.8ClaimDepot. Travel Guard Insurance Hidden Fees Settlement
The claim deadline was August 13, 2024. No payments have gone out, however. An objector filed a notice of appeal and the settlement is stayed pending resolution.7TravelFeeSettlement.com. Travel Guard Class Action Settlement The settlement also requires the companies to tell future Travel Guard policyholders that plan prices include a fee for non-insurance travel assistance services.9Insurance Business Magazine. AIG Class Action Settlement Gets Preliminary Green Light
Youth Sports and “Stay-to-Play” Booking
In May 2026, five parents from Kentucky, California, and New York filed Russell et al. v. The Complete Plan, Inc. d/b/a Team Travel Source (Case No. 3:26-cv-00360-CHB) in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky.10PR Newswire. Almeida Law Group Represents Parents Suing Team Travel Source Over Stay-to-Play Junk Fee
Under a stay-to-play policy, families traveling to youth sports tournaments must book hotel rooms through a designated platform as a condition of their child’s team being eligible to compete. Team Travel Source books roughly 1.4 million room nights a year and reported $17 million in rebates to tournament operators in 2025.11Fastbreak. Stay-to-Play Policies Explained for Parents The lawsuit alleges several practices:
- Parents were told their children’s teams would be ineligible to compete unless they booked through Team Travel Source, even at events that did not officially require stay-to-play participation.
- The company added a mandatory nightly “housing fee” to reservations that provided no benefit to families.
- Team Travel Source advertised a “Lowest Rate Guarantee” while routinely charging more than direct hotel bookings or competing platforms, then refused to honor the guarantee when parents produced lower rates.
- The company induced hotels to raise their publicly listed rates so that Team Travel Source block rates would look competitive by comparison.
The suit seeks certification of a nationwide class going back five years, with California and New York subclasses. Lead counsel Karen Dahlberg O’Connell of Almeida Law Group called stay-to-play policies “thinly veiled money-grabs from parents.”12Almeida Law Group. Stay-to-Play Travel Sports Investigation Team Travel Source denied the allegations and said it “will address these allegations at the appropriate time, and in the appropriate forum, through legal counsel.”13Buying Sand Lot. Youth Sports Parents File Class Action Stay-to-Play Lawsuit The case has produced no rulings on class certification or the merits.
The filing follows antitrust litigation against Varsity Brands, the dominant competitive cheerleading company, which settled a consumer class action for $82.5 million in 2024 over allegations that it monopolized competition, camp, and apparel markets, including steering families to pre-selected, more expensive hotels.14Sportico. Varsity Antitrust Settlement Open Championship A separate Varsity case brought by all-star cheer gyms settled for $43.5 million in 2023,15Berger Montague. Fusion Elite All Stars et al. v. Varsity Brands, LLC et al. and a fourth Varsity antitrust suit reached a confidential settlement in May 2026, just before trial.
Airlines: Fare Conspiracy and Refund Rules
A long-running class action accused Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines of conspiring to limit domestic flight capacity to inflate fares. American settled for $45 million and Southwest for $15 million, with both settlements receiving final approval in May 2019. Those funds remain in escrow because the case against Delta and United continues. A federal district court denied those carriers’ motions for summary judgment in September 2023, and as of late 2023 the airlines were seeking certification for an interlocutory appeal.16DomesticAirClass.com. Domestic Air Class Action Settlement
On the regulatory side, the Department of Transportation finalized an automatic airline refund rule in 2024 requiring carriers to promptly refund passengers for cancelled or significantly delayed flights. By late 2025, the DOT paused enforcement of one piece: how to treat flight renumbering. Airlines argued the definition was overly broad, and in December 2025 the DOT said it would not enforce refund requirements for renumbered flights through June 30, 2026, as long as passengers are rebooked without significant itinerary changes. The agency opened a new rulemaking to reconsider the definition of a cancelled flight, with a proposed rule targeted for early 2026.17Federal Register. Airline Refunds and Other Consumer Protections
Hotel Occupancy Tax Fights With Online Travel Companies
Behind the scenes of your hotel bill is a decade-long dispute between state and local governments and platforms like Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz, Hotels.com, and Travelocity. The question: when a traveler pays $150 for a room the platform bought wholesale from the hotel for $100, does the local hotel tax apply to the full $150 or just the $100?
The platforms have mostly won. Across 34 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, 92 lawsuits were filed against online travel companies over hotel occupancy taxes. Of the 49 cases decided on the merits, 39 held that the platforms’ service fees are not taxable; only 10 held that they are.18Tax Foundation. Litigation Ongoing Against Online Travel Companies Hotel Occupancy Taxes Three federal circuit courts, the Fourth, Sixth, and Eleventh, sided with the travel companies, and no federal circuit has ruled the other way.19Tax Foundation. Online Travel Companies and Hotel Occupancy Taxes
Most courts have reasoned that because the platforms do not own rooms or furnish occupancy, their markup falls outside hotel occupancy taxes written to cover the cost of a room. A high-profile example: in November 2017, the Fifth Circuit reversed an $84 million judgment that a Texas trial court had awarded to 173 municipalities against Hotels.com, Hotwire, Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity, finding the local ordinances ambiguous and taxing only the discounted rate the platforms paid hotels.18Tax Foundation. Litigation Ongoing Against Online Travel Companies Hotel Occupancy Taxes The highest courts of Georgia, South Carolina, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia reached the opposite conclusion, finding the full consumer price taxable.19Tax Foundation. Online Travel Companies and Hotel Occupancy Taxes Where governments wanted the tax expanded, most courts said that was work for legislatures.
Rate Parity and Antitrust
Related litigation has asked whether hotel chains and booking platforms conspire to fix prices through “rate parity” clauses, which require hotels to offer the same or higher prices on their own websites than they list on platforms like Booking.com or Expedia.
In the United States, a class action in Dallas against 22 travel brands, including Marriott, Expedia, Priceline, Hilton, and Orbitz, was dismissed in February 2014. U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle found no evidence of a conspiracy, concluding that each company had entered its parity agreements in its own rational business interest. The Department of Justice had already declined to investigate in 2010.20PhocusWire. Marriott, Expedia, Priceline and Other Brands Escape Hotel Rate Parity Suit
Europe moved more aggressively. Germany’s Bundeskartellamt prohibited HRS’s parity clause in 2013 and banned Booking.com’s narrower version in 2015. France, Italy, and Sweden accepted 2015 commitments from Booking.com to replace “wide” parity (best price across all channels) with “narrow” parity (lower prices allowed on other platforms but not on a hotel’s own website). France and Austria passed laws voiding rate parity clauses outright. Even so, a 2016 EU monitoring exercise found that 79% of surveyed hotels still did not differentiate prices between competing platforms, citing fear of losing search visibility or preferred-partner status.21European Commission. Hotel Monitoring Report
Privacy and Wiretapping Claims Against Booking Sites
A newer category of travel litigation involves allegations that booking websites share user data, including itineraries, browsing behavior, and reservation details, with third parties such as Meta, PayPal, and analytics companies without user consent. Many of these matters proceed through mass arbitration because travel sites’ terms of service include class action waivers. Investigations have targeted Hopper, Margaritaville Resorts, Alamo, and Vegas.com, among others, with closed or completed investigations involving Omni Hotels, Agoda, Hard Rock, Travelzoo, Avis, Kayak, IHG, United Airlines, Turo, and Priceline.22ClassAction.org. Travel Website Wiretapping Privacy
The legal footing is unsettled. California’s Invasion of Privacy Act has been a primary vehicle, but in January 2025 a California state court dismissed wiretapping claims against Cars.com, ruling that the statute’s “pen register” provisions do not extend to internet communications or website tools that collect only device-identifying information.23Inside Class Actions. 2025 Website Wiretapping Roundup None of the travel-related wiretapping matters have produced a reported settlement or final judgment.
If you booked a trip during one of these windows, check the specific settlement site for eligibility and deadlines before assuming you’re covered. Class periods, state residency rules, and claim deadlines vary case to case, and some settlements, like Travel Guard, are paying nothing out until appeals resolve.