While I'm searching for hotels for an upcoming trip to Auckland (wooohooo!) I have stumbled upon something really weird, thought I'll share that here for laughs
I've been comparing pricing on a few travel sites and generally the results were quite similar, as I'm a subscriber to newsletters of both expedia.com and expedia.com.au, I got a promotional email for "50% off selected hotels". The search result from the link was not that exciting with most hotels were slightly cheaper than what I have seen before, then I realized that the link took me to US version of expedia.com and all prices were USD. So I thought to myself pffft here's my time went for nothing, but the Rydges rate seemed to be cheap as I remember on expedia.com.au it was more expensive. Then I thought to myself hmmm lets compare the price between the Australian and US based websites and see if there are any differences, lo and behold, the results are here.
As you could see from the screenshot, by selecting identical dates, room type, booking preference, the Australian website will charge you NZD100+ more than the US website! Another "The Australia Tax"?
Just to be fair, I have done searches on Rydges Australia and Rydges NZ, both searches came up with same price (199 NZD per night, 885 NZD in total), and I have compared another hotel's price on expedia US and expedia AU and both prices were the same.
Not sure how this could have occurred but definitely an interesting tip for ozbargainers I suppose?
Australia Tax is literally everywhere. This isn't the worst example though (anyone remember when Adobe products could be bought cheaper by flying return ticket to the US and buying it there than just getting it here locally?).