Hotel resort fees, hidden charges bemoaned by travelers, are climbing higher than ever

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By Christopher Elliott

Tamara Myers thought that her hotel bill at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino would come to $415. At least that’s what Otel.com, the website through which she booked the room, promised her.

But the site glossed over a small detail: A mandatory daily “resort fee” payable at checkout, which added $306 to the folio.

Gotcha.

“I did my due diligence,” insists Myers, who lives in Indianapolis and works for the military. She’d made the reservation for her 88-year-old mother, who was caring for her brother in Las Vegas. “The Hotel resort fee was listed nowhere on Otel.com.”

Hotel fees are on the rise

Mandatory resort fees, tacked onto a hotel bill after an initial price quote — and sometimes even later, as with Myers — are on the rise again. A total of 1,026 domestic hotels charged a resort fee for the first half of 2017, a 14 percent increase from just six months ago, according to new research from Resortfeechecker.com, a site that allows travelers to look up resort fees at hotels worldwide. The average resort fee, which covers everything from “free” WiFi to access to exercise facilities, now stands at almost $21, a jump of 8.7 percent from last December.

The biggest increases came in large metropolitan cities, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where resort fees are up by a whopping 70 percent in six months. “Until recently, most hotels in these cities didn’t charge a fee,” says Randy Greencorn, publisher of Resortfeechecker.com.

No wonder, then, that frustration with resort fees is reaching a boiling point. They’re difficult to fight once they’ve been added to a bill. Government action on the fees, once thought to be inevitable, has stalled.

(Oh, and if you think hotel fees are bad, try flying. Hidden airline fees are everywhere these days.)

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Resort fees showcase deceptive tactics in the travel sector

Resort fees are classic travel industry sleight-of-hand — you’re quoted one price, you pay another — yet for now they remain perfectly legal. How so? Hotels are only required to disclose the fee before the booking is made, but not when the initial price quote is made. The Westgate’s site warns that a resort fee of $29.95 plus tax a night “may” apply. A search for a weekly room rate in August shows a price of $781 for a standard “Signature” room. The next screen downplays the final room rate, which, after taxes and resort fees, comes to $1,192, a 53 percent increase. You have to click an arrow to get a price breakdown.

Otel.com shows an asterisk and refers to resort fees under “Hotel Information” on its booking page. “Some hotels do charge a resort fee which must be paid to the hotel directly,” it warns. “Otel.com is not responsible for resort fee charges and has no control over their implementation.”

This isn’t our first complaint about Westgate.

A Westgate representative said that the hotel does not contract directly with Otel.com. “All of our direct booking partners and our corporate websites clearly mark the presence of our resort fee, consistent with nearly every other major resort in Las Vegas,” said Jeff Klein, a resort spokesman. Klein says it has contacted Otel.com and asked it to “make this right with the customer.” I did, too, but received no response.

That’s how it goes with most attempts to claw back a resort fee

Evidently, hotels and intermediaries seem to believe that asterisks and hidden disclosures suffice. They perceive the government’s lack of action on this issue as a subtle approval of their methods.

Only a few months ago, resort fees were headed for extinction. The Federal Trade Commission signaled that the fees as they are currently advertised by most hotels were “unfair and deceptive.” The agency was poised to announce a policy shift that would require resort fees to be included in the initial price quote, according to multiple sources. (The Doubletree San Juan charged a customer an 18 percent per night resort fee despite not being a resort.)

The battle over resort fees

But after the presidential election, the federal government cooled on further regulating the hotel industry. There is a national investigation regarding resort fees. It’s being led by the attorney general of the District, with participation from 46 state attorneys general. In June, the D.C. attorney general issued a subpoena to Marriott. The subpoena demands documents connected to their investigation into whether Marriott’s practice of charging resort fees that are “undisclosed or poorly disclosed” violates the consumer protection laws of the District.

Marriott says it “fully” discloses resort fees to consumers before they complete their booking on any of its direct channels. “We have been cooperating with the District of Columbia’s request for information in accordance with their investigation into industry resort fee disclosure practices,” says John Wolf, a spokesman for Marriott.

But until a state, the FTC or a court declares these fees illegal, they’re bound to continue multiplying, industry observers say. It’s a source of frustration for travelers and embarrassment for tourism officials. My advocacy team contacted representatives in the top three cities for resort fees — Orlando, Miami and Las Vegas — after the Resortfeechecker.com data was released. Officials in Orlando and Las Vegas declined to comment, and Miami did not respond. (Related: Have hotels taken their fees too far?)

There are a few quick fixes

The first is obvious: Review the fine print, especially if you’re booking through a third party. Discount hotel websites might deliberately hide resort fees. Alternatively, they might lack the latest resort fee details from the property. You owe it to yourself to check with the hotel before you make your reservation. (Here is my guide to finding the best travel insurance).

In some cases, resort fees can be avoided by joining hotel loyalty programs, Greencorn says. “Sign-up takes only a couple of minutes and can be done online. Before booking, travelers should check with their hotel directly to see if they provide this benefit to its members.”

These are only stopgap measures, but they should help you avoid unpleasant resort fees until the long arm of the law catches up with hotels. It’s only a matter of time.

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Christopher Elliott

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers consumers to solve their problems and helps those who can't. He's the author of numerous books on consumer advocacy and writes three nationally syndicated columns. He also publishes the Elliott Report, a news site for consumers, and Elliott Confidential, a critically acclaimed newsletter about customer service. If you have a consumer problem you can't solve, contact him directly through his advocacy website. You can also follow him on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or sign up for his daily newsletter. He is based in Panamá City.

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