Investigation: Vacationers charged up to 70% more through U.S. websites

• Americans are being charged thousands of dollars more for hotel stays and car hire that overseas customers, reveals research by cybersecurity company NordVPN

• Consumers booking a vehicle through the US site for Enterprise paid 70% more – an extra $512 – than those using the UK version

• Researchers used a Virtual Private Network to find savings from travel sites including Hertz, Hotels.com and Booking.com in countries like Italy, France and the UK.

New York — Vacationers booking holidays through US websites this year are being charged thousands of dollars more than overseas customers for exactly the same deals, research commissioned by cybersecurity company NordVPN reveals.

From luxury breaks and hotel stays to car hire and theme parks, Americans are frequently being presented with wildly different prices depending on where they log on.

Using the UK website for Enterprise resulted in a $512 saving on hiring a passenger van – meaning that US users are paying almost 70% more than those on the other side of the Atlantic.

NordVPN’s researchers used its Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to make it look to websites like they were not in the US. They discovered savings across a range of well-known travel sites like Hertz, Hotels.com, Booking.com and Europcar, for a variety of countries, including Italy, France, Indonesia and the UK.

What is a VPN? A VPN disguises your IP address, while improving privacy and security. You select a country and NordVPN ensures that’s where websites think you are. VPN users are then able to see the differing content — and prices — shown to overseas consumers.

Using a VPN, hiring a Ford Galaxy passenger van from Edinburgh, Scotland, through Enterprise revealed a $512 price difference. The US website quoted $1,249 and the UK site £512 – equal to $737 — a 41% saving, meaning that US customers are paying 69.5% more.

Vacationers wanting to visit Paris could save $976 on a seven-night stay in the five-star Hôtel Splendide Royal Paris - Relais & Châteaux in a Junior Suite Saint Honore. Visitors using the US Hotels.com site are quoted $8,746, compared with $7,770 for those using the French website.

A seven-night stay in Rafayel on the Left Bank in London, cost $2,213 on the US site of Hotels.com but only $2,044 when using a UK-based VPN – a $169 (8%) saving.

Using Booking.com to visit the romantic city of Milan from an Italian server led to a 17% ($203) lower price on a seven-night stay in Hotel Kennedy in a basic triple room for a family of three. Visitors to the US site were offered a price of $1,216, which fell to $1,013 for Italian web users.

The research was commissioned by NordVPN and conducted by an external company between 2nd to 12th April 2024. Simultaneous searches were made for identical products being sold by the same vendor using numerous country servers. This is the second consecutive year carrying out the vacation pricing research, and Americans are still being shown different prices to people elsewhere in the world.

Marijus Briedis, Chief Technology Officer at NordVPN, said: “Millions of us have got used to hunting for a vacation and booking our holiday car hire online, but not all customers are treated equally when it comes to the price.

“Online tracking used by travel websites means that they can tell what holiday we’re looking for before we do, while algorithms can adjust holiday prices to the spending power of different countries.

“Never assume you’re getting the same deal as everyone else. Your location, the number of visits you pay to a website, and how your search fits in with the school holiday schedule, can all influence the price you’re offered.

“The best way to fight back is to shop around with the same provider using a VPN and see if you can find hidden savings offered to customers overseas. As our research shows, it could save you thousands of dollars a trip.

“Once you’ve found your perfect hotel, run the site through a local VPN to the country you are visiting and do a side-by-side comparison. You can use an online currency exchange to help in your search.”

ABOUT NORDVPN

NordVPN is the world’s most advanced VPN service provider, used by millions of internet users worldwide. NordVPN provides double VPN encryption and Onion Over VPN and guarantees privacy with zero tracking. One of the key features of the product is Threat Protection, which blocks malicious websites, malware during downloads, trackers, and ads. NordVPN is very user friendly, offers one of the best prices on the market, and has over 6800 servers covering 111 countries worldwide. For more information: https://nordvpn.com.