Mandatory resort fees have been annoying hotel guests for almost as long as I’ve been covering the hotel industry, which is to say, a long time. But how do you persuade a property to remove these unwanted extras from your bill?
In the past, simply asking to have the additional $10 or $20 a night stricken from your bill was enough. Not anymore. Now, your friendly hotel clerk is far likelier to take a hard line when you’re checking out.
Consider what happened to George Lilley when he checked into Treasure Island Las Vegas recently. Its non-negotiable $20 resort fee, which covers Internet access, phone calls and gym access, is among the worst-disclosed I’ve ever seen (you have to scroll to the bottom of this page, and it still isn’t entirely clear if the fee is required). Apparently, the same is true when booking by phone.
Prior to our trip to Las Vegas, we telephoned several casino/hotels for prices before we provided our credit card to complete the transaction.
Treasure Island’s quote was accepted based on Treasure Island nightly charges provided us. When my wife called to obtain the quote for prices, no mention was made of a “Resort Fee.”
When Lilley and his wife checked into Treasure Island, they again asked a hotel representative to verify their rate. He did, and they handed him their credit card.
He ran the charges against our card and then handed us a prepared sheet entitled, “*$20 + Tax ($22.40) total) Daily Resort Fee Includes”
I informed the representative that we were visiting with friends throughout our stay and would have no time for being involved with anything listed on this form. I was told that this is part of the charge.
This form notice provided after our credit card was charged, was our first notice of a “Resort Fee” charge.
What now?
Well, had the Lilley known about the resort fee, they might be out of luck. But Treasure Island had quoted them one rate but then increased the price by $112. In situations like this, I recommend a credit card dispute.
Which is exactly what they did.
Yesterday, he sent me an update:
A letter from American Express stated, “OUTCOME – This dispute has been resolved in your favor. The merchant has not yet provided the information necessary to resolve your claim. Therefore, we have issued credit to your account and removed the previously suspended amount, which will reflect on an upcoming statement.”
Folks, remember this when you encounter a surprise surcharge. The hotel may not see things your way. But your charge card just might.
(Photo: jamiejohndavies/Flickr Creative Commons)
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
The only problem with fighting via credit card dispute is the hotel may blacklist you as a customer, which can become a real problem if it’s a chain hotel that you frequently use. And that’s an entirely new dispute.
And there are only, what – a thousand other hotels in VEgas?
If the hotel is going to be that underhanded as to not state up front such fees, then you likely won’t want to stay with them again anyways.
This isn’t so much winning against a resort fee as the person at the hotel who’s supposed to respond to requests from the credit card company for verification failing to do so in a timely fashion.
Still, they got the credit :-)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if it’s a mandatory fee that cannot be avoided, it should be included in the base rate. Period. There’s no reason to separate out a mandatory resort fee except to deceive the consumer.
What I find particularly shortsighted about Vegas hotels is that some of them also apply the resort fee to comped rooms. So people are potentially spending thousands of dollars at your casino, and your response is to nickel-and-dime them. Makes a ton of sense. I know gamblers who have changed their loyalty to a different casino brand specifically because they took offense to the resort fee being applied to comped rooms – and it’s certainly not because they can’t afford to pay it, either.
The Harrahs hotel chain does not have a resort fee. They just bought out Planey Hollywood, where I like to stay.
Any thoughts re how best to challenge a well-disclosed resort fee? Or is that a losing proposition?
Ridiculous. First, most of the items covered in this resort fee are per stay, yet the fee is daily. Second, how can hotels value in-room high speed internet access at $15/day? I’d be amazed if ISPs charge them even a quarter of that amount… Third, many nightclubs in Vegas, including some better than TI, are free if you do your homework.
Wonder if one is staying at any property for a meeting/convention and the resort/hotel fee has been included in the contract if any hotel would still negotiate it off one’s folio at check-in or out.
@ Stoyko – “Second, how can hotels value in-room high speed internet access at $15/day? I’d be amazed if ISPs charge them even a quarter of that amount…”
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Even if the hotel was being charged $ 4 per day per room for high speed Internet service, they are not going to pass that cost to the guest without adding a mark-up. Please remember that the hotels are in the business of making money.
It can be very costly to install high speed Internet service especially when it is a wired connection and the hotel was constructed before 2000. Even if it is wireless, there are start-up costs as well.
Oh, how I do hate resort fees!
An aside, re. the credit card ruling in person’s favor, the irritating part of winning in this case is that it is my understanding that the credit card company just absorbs this dispute cost and the resort doesn’t take even this tiny hit. So it isn’t really the resort refunding the money (losing) but the credit card refunding it from their own sort of slush fund. The bottom line is the customer gets their money back but it doesn’t affect the resort and they have no incentive to stop charging the resort fee.
@ Joe – I thought the same thing…the hotel didn’t respond to the credit card company. I wonder what would be the outcome if the hotel responded.
As a side note, are there readers of the Elliott newsletter that works for (or used to work for) a Las Vegas casino hotel? Based upon my experiences with the casino hotels in Las Vegas, it seems like most of them of antiquated software. I spend 100+ nights a year on the road. If there is a correction that needs to be made to my bill, it usually takes ‘no’ time at all to correct the statement and print a new statement. In Vegas, it seems like the opposite. A few months ago, I was in Las Vegas for a trade show. There was an error to my account and it took five minutes of constant typing on the keyboard to make the correction. Is it outdated and non-friendly software or a ploy to discourage people asking for corrections?
When slapped with undisclosed fees in a number of cases (hotels, rental cars, even once an airline), I have found an effective tactic is to dispute it with the credit card company, tell them you are not sure but you do not believe you authorized the charge, and be VERY specific and demanding about what documentation you want from the supplier to justify it. I’m rarely 100% sure that they didn’t disclose it, I know I miss things, but there’s nothing inappropriate about making them prove that they did.
The more challenging you can make this request, the more likely the supplier will just write it off (fail to respond). For example if you booked a hotel on the web and get hit with a resort fee, tell them you want an exact copy of the pages you viewed as they were at the time you viewed them, and with the disclosure highlighted. Few companies can do this; either they will ignore it (you win), or send you a copy of the *current* web pages; if they do the latter then you can compare the confirmation page to the one that you (hopefully) printed at the time you made the booking – it will almost certainly be different, which means you can tell the credit card company that the supplier did not comply with your request for documentation, and that the documentation they provided doesn’t support their claim.
If your request is reasonably necessary to support your claim that you weren’t told about the fee, and the merchant doesn’t provide the info, the credit card company pretty much has to take your side.
Using this approach I have never lost a dispute, and have won probably 8-10 of them over the years. I’m going to guess that in some cases the disclosures WERE made and I just missed them, but no one yet found it worthwhile to actually prove it.
This may not be the final chapter. I once disputed with my credit card company a $50 charge American Airlines never disclosed to me (after getting nowhere with AA). Similar situation, AA never responded, the credit card ruled in my favor. A few weeks later, I got a bill from AA for $50 with a note, “Your credit card denied payment. You owe $50.” When I explained to them why my credit card company denied payment and sent them documentation, they sent the matter to a collection agency.
So, Treasure Island probably didn’t respond to Amex because they knew they would lose. If they are as greedy as AA, they can still send the matter to a collection agency and it’s up to you to challenge the original invoice. Providing documentation that Amex ruled in your favor will not satisfy a collection agency. Then again, Treasure Island might have better things to do.
@Carole Terwilliger Meyers:
The Credit Card company doesn’t absorb the cost of the dispute. The chargeback is just that, a chargeback. The vendor that processed the charges initially will have the funds deducted from their account. You can’t think that Mastercard or Visa would set-up a system that would allow all disputes to be at handled at their cost. If this was the case, the merchant would have no incentive to respond to a chargeback.
@Peter – Any thoughts re how best to challenge a well-disclosed resort fee?
Take your business elsewhere. If it’s fully disclosed and you still choose to stay at that property, then you have agreed to pay the resort fee.
@ARW – I agree with everything you say. Still, markups of over 200% *are* ridiculous. Not just when charged by hotels. There are many other examples of ridiculous markups, but the topic here is hotels.
Another point – hotels have probably come to realize that they don’t have a chance of getting many customers to pay the ridiculous $15/day high speed internet fee. That is probably one of the reasons they are trying to bundle it and make it mandatory.
I generally book online. I usually stay at Marriott properties, which, on their web page and in an email, disclose all of the fees, including anticipated taxes. They are pretty much highly accurate.
It is the same thing when I book on Air Canada or rent a car from Hertz. I get told what the anticipated charges will be.
I hate resort fees, but they need to disclose them at the time of reservation. If they don’t, then they should not be paid.
A Virginia based company had a conference recently at the Gaylord in Washington, DC. The Gaylord disclosed a “resort fee”. I didn’t go to the conference! I went to it last year, but if they are going to have it at “resort fee” hotels, they can go get stuffed.
The issue for me would be the time it would take to dispute the charge. Based on all the trouble involved, it *almost* seems worth it just to pay the unjustified amount. Almost.
I’m a bit reluctant to believe the OP didn’t do any reasearch via the web. The first thing I do is check reviews for whatever I’m planning on booking, be it a hotel, attraction, rental car, etc. Just seems common sense to me.
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