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.
Alderman, a retired documentary filmmaker who lives in Toronto, had been visiting the South Point Hotel Casino & Spa since 2005, dropping about $600 for his weekly stays every time. He liked the hotel’s affordability and the fact that it promised to “never” charge these junk fees, which supposedly cover in-room wireless Internet access, use of the fitness center and “printing of boarding passes” — whether you use the amenities or not.
Until it did.
After Jane Hatch selected the room rate she wanted at the West Street Hotel in Bar Harbor, Maine, the hotel Web site delivered an unpleasant surprise on the next screen: The quoted price hadn’t included a $25-per-day “resort and club fee” that gave Hatch access to the hotel pool, hot tub and fitness center — whether she wanted it or not.
“They didn’t tell me until the end,” says Hatch, who lives in Montgomery Village, Md. “I still booked the room, but it was misleading and unbecoming, particularly for a new property looking to make its mark. Perhaps they don’t care in resort areas like Bar Harbor. But I care.”
Resort fees fall under the category of “nuisance” surcharges because they’re usually so insignificant that they’re not worth fighting. And travel companies know it, which is one reason they keep piling ’em on.
But what happens when these extras rise to the level of a major expenditure?
When Dennis Kavanagh booked two nights by phone at the Resort at Squaw Creek in Squaw Valley, Calif., the agent quoted him a rate that didn’t include a small surprise: a $16-a-day “resort fee” that covered “free” local calls, a newspaper delivery, in-room coffee and teas, Internet access and use of the health club.
The fee is clearly but not prominently disclosed on the hotel’s site, but for some reason, the hotel reservation agent didn’t say a word about it. That turned out to be a big mistake.
Mandatory resort fees added to your hotel bill 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 extra fees from your bill?
Sue Allen and her husband, Dale, have been coming to the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin for years. “We love the convenience and location,” Sue says of Orlando resort hotel.
Back in January, I noted with amusement that Harrah’s had issued a press release saying it does not “impose mandatory resort fees attached to a room reservation.”
At the time, I wondered why Harrah’s had phrased its announcement in exactly that way. Why not just say, “We’ve eliminated resort fees?” Also, it remained unclear why a large casino resort would turn down money from its guests that, at least according to the other casinos in town, they were more than willing to pay.
Well, yesterday I got the troubling answer to all of those questions.
