Fine print leave you feeling like fare game?

How often have you become excited about a bargain airfare only to find out that taxes and fees will add another $200 to the price?

What about the Internet photos that make a hotel room appear to be double its actual size?

Or how about the cruise-line brochures that answer all your questions about casinos, spas and shore excursions but relegate to tiny print the information that a port of call can be dropped or the itinerary changed without notice?

My New Year's resolution for the travel industry is to put more truth into traveling.

I began thinking about this after I searched Northwest Airlines' Web site recently and spotted a $578 fare from Seattle to London in bold black letters. Then I looked again, and saw the real price — $701 including taxes and fees — in tiny type.

It's not unusual for travel suppliers to quote prices without taxes. This often happens when you call a hotel and ask for the rate. But it's hardly good customer service, and it's especially annoying when you're shopping the online travel sites to compare prices.

Some delay disclosing the real price until you're into the second or third round of clicks. Airgorilla.com, for instance, lists air fares in big black numbers with the words "plus taxes" next to it in small type. It's only when you click on "go," that you find out that a $592 Seattle-Tokyo round trip is really $753.

Bottom line: More online travel sites would do well to follow the lead of Expedia and Travelocity. Both list one price when quoting the cost of airfares, hotels and rental cars, the only one that really matters, the one that includes all taxes and fees.

Ixtapa "from $489" ...

There are some legit last-minute travel deals out there, but finding them quickly isn't as easy as it once was. The key word in too many promotions is "from," meaning that unless you're willing to stay in a budget motel and lose a day by taking a night flight, most anything is going to cost more than the initially quoted price.

Travel sites such as Site59.com, which specializes in last-minute three- and four-day air/hotel getaways, do a good job of efficiently bundling air and hotel packages, but the bargains are sometimes not what they appear.

Example: The only hotel choice for a recently advertised $227 per person three-night vacation to Lake Tahoe was the budget A and A Lake Tahoe Inn. The next option was a Hyatt Regency resort and spa at an extra cost of $215 per person. Three choices for departing flights came up, each an extra $41-$60. Go-today.com, which offers similar deals on short trips to foreign destinations, recently advertised a three-night, four-day winter "Ixtapa/Zihuantanejo Getaway." The air inclusive package price was advertised "from $489," but this was per-person based on double occupancy in the least-expensive hotel, the Posada Real Ixtapa, a Best Western where user reviews on TripAdvisor.com range from "We love it!" to "Will never stay here ever."

That price, as it turned out, applied only to departures from Denver. Adding in another $90 each for a Seattle departure, $40 each for leaving on a weekend and $200 for fees and surcharges, the grand total rang up at $1,458.

Resolution: Eliminate the "deals" that really aren't, and concentrate on putting together packages that really do make sense for the last-minute traveler.

Read the fine print

A magnifying glass shouldn't be counted as a travel accessory, but it's a tool most travelers would be happy to find in their stocking this morning.

My resolution for tour companies, cruise lines, banks and insurance agencies is to be more up front about the strings attached to the services they provide.

It's in no one's interest to hide information about what happens if a cruise line drops a port of call or a tour operator changes the itinerary, yet the details often end up buried in a category labeled "legal notices" at the bottom of a Web page or in the "general terms and conditions" portions of a travel brochures.

Let's hear it for large type.

Banks lately have been more straightforward in disclosing the fees they charge for using credit cards abroad. Most now break out the charges as separate items on statements instead of embedding them into the exchange rate they use to convert purchases into dollars.

As a result, more customers are now aware of the fees. Still, you won't find any mention of foreign currency conversion charges in the lengthy list of Visa and MasterCard FAQs published by financial institutions on their Web sites.

Nor will you find an explanation of something called "dynamic currency conversion," a system that lets overseas merchants or rental-car agencies convert your bill from the local currency (euros, Canadian dollars, Mexican pesos, etc.) into dollars on the spot.

This is marketed as a "service" to customers who won't have to bother "with messy foreign exchange calculations," according to one promoter.

It's mostly a money-making scheme for merchants who set the exchange rate 5-6 cents on the dollar higher than the official bank rate, then pocket the difference as a "service fee."

What to do to avoid this? Read the fine print, of course. There's a note on the sales invoice that says by signing, you agree to have your charge converted to dollars. Refuse to sign. If the merchant protests, walk away. This is one "service" you can afford to do without.

Carol Pucci's Travel Wise column runs the last Sunday of the month in Travel. Comments are welcome. Contact her at 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com.