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Are hotels unaware of where they are located and so unable to determine their prices? I'm pretty sure that the cause of the collapse of the Pax Americana at thi
by hotpotamus 3y ago
Are hotels unaware of where they are located and so unable to determine their prices? I'm pretty sure that the cause of the collapse of the Pax Americana at this point will be the willful conflation of American Exceptionalism into learned helplessness.
- crazygringo 3y agoSee my sibling comment to understand. Also it's not just about the hotel location, but also changes depending on the buyer's location -- which of course often isn't known until the checkout process. So maybe it's not quite so simple, with so cartoonish a villain, as you assume.
- hotpotamus 3y agoIs it so complicated that only Europeans can do it; Americans are too unintelligent to match?
- crazygringo 3y agoPlease stop being rude and chauvinistic. If European countries chose to have VAT that varied geographically within a country, they wouldn't be able to build it into the price either. Why you think it has anything to do with "national intelligence" is quite beyond me.
- buildbot 3y agoWell…they do… https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/value-added-tax-2023-vat-rates-europe/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/value-added-tax-2023-v...
- crazygringo 3y agoNo they don't. That clearly shows rates varying between countries. Not within a country. Which is fine, because prices are generally advertised within a country, not Europe-wide.
- vel0city 3y agoYou're showing tax variations across countries. I see tax variations within a couple of miles!
- hotpotamus 3y agoI'm curious where you have ever seen a national advertisement for a hotel room that includes a price; it is not something I've observed but perhaps my chauvinism has blinded me. That said, do you think that a hotel company is able to calculate the price of a room when I go onto their online portal and request a price for a particular location and date?
- ghaff 3y agoThe usual strategy is to nationally advertise "as low as" some base $$ amount. And then you go into the online portal and come up with an actual price for an actual date that (hopefully) includes all taxes and fees--and is probably a fair bit more.
- Yeul 3y agoPerhaps the Americans chose poorly.
- nradov 3y agoIn certain states, some customers such as disabled veterans are exempt from hotel occupancy tax. So the tax rate isn't necessarily the same for everyone.