- Resort fees are a top frustration for travelers, who are dismayed by the added costs to hotel rates.
- These fees, which can cover everything from WiFi to gym access, often cost $25 to $50 a night.
There's nothing like finding the perfect hotel, seeing great rates for the duration of your stay, and getting to the payment page, only to see a cost far beyond what had initially been estimated.
Travelers, looking intently at the details of the would-be reservation, may wonder if they accidentally selected the incorrect room type or if they entered too many days for the trip.
But what consumers are actually seeing are resort fees — also known as destination fees — which are mandatory daily charges tacked on to the cost of rooms at select properties that purportedly cover expenses like Wi-Fi, parking, pool access, and access to fitness centers. The fees generally range from $25 to $50 a night but can go much higher.
While some full-service luxury resorts have charged the fees for some time now, resort fees in recent years have inexplicably become prevalent at urban properties that are not resorts, notably in many hotels in New York City, a top international destination that is already one of the most expensive cities for travelers.
How did resort fees become such a prominent part of the travel landscape? And what is being done to curb them?
How resort fees began to spread
Resort fees aren't a totally new phenomenon. They were first imposed at various high-end properties in Hawaii in the 1990s, and became a broader part of the landscape in cities like Orlando, Florida — home of the Walt Disney World Resort — and Las Vegas.
But there are many hotels in all of these destinations that are true resorts, filled with luxury packages that include spa services, meals at various high-end restaurants, and other perks that most smaller hotels simply do not offer.
As the resort fees migrated to other properties, they took on other names, like "amenity fees" or "facility fees." As they became a broader part of the hotel world, these fees also became part of the booking process at hotels well below the luxury level.
In 2011, the hotel industry had collected $1.85 billion in resort fees. By 2018, the industry had taken in roughly $2.93 billion in resort fees, according to a report from the New York University School of Professional Studies Jonathan M. Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism.
At urban properties, often located in the higher-priced downtowns and central business districts of US cities, resort fees imposed on travelers were the most significant contributor to the fee increase for 2018, according to the report.
Why hotels lean on resort fees
Lauren Wolfe, counsel for nonprofit consumer-advocacy group Travelers United, told Insider that once resort fees became the norm at many resort destinations, they were simply expanded to many non-resort destinations.
"The hotels started to do it because they could get away with it," she said.
Wolfe founded a website called Kill Resort Fees in 2016 after being asked to pay an additional resort fee on a $400 hotel room she prepaid for in Key West, Florida. She said that the issue of resort fees has only become more prevalent with the growth of booking websites which let people search by price.
"If people are searching based off the price, say they're going to stay at a 3.5-star hotel," she said. "They'll go with a 3.5-star price. They might not know there's a fee that's actually making that room $50 more than whatever it was advertised online."
"I think the proliferation of online search in comparison by price has exacerbated this problem to where we are today. If action is not taken, we're not too far away from hotels advertising a $1 room with a $100 hotel fee," she added.
Wolfe said there are already cases where the resort fee exceeds the advertised room rate.
The Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, for example, had relatively inexpensive room prices during a recent search, which included a "special" rate of $26.95 as an option.
However, once a $37.42 resort fee was imposed, along with an initial $30.56 room charge (which included a $3.61 occupancy tax), a one-night rate then stood at $67.98. While only the $30.56 was due at the time of the booking, the additional resort fee was to be paid at arrival.
Consumers have the ear of the White House
President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address earlier this month railed against what he called "junk fees," allying himself with consumers incensed over elevated charges on everything from credit card late fees to charges incurred simply by switching cable providers.
"Junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most other folks in homes like the one I grew up in, like many of you did," he said in laying out his administration's push for Congress to pass the Junk Fee Prevention Act.
"We're going to ban surprise resort fees that hotels charge on your bill. Those fees can cost up to $90 a night at hotels that aren't even resorts," he said, leaning into his microphone for added emphasis.
Biden has taken on a populist tack to the issue, which is poised to put pressure not only on the hotel industry, but on legislators who will have a hard time justifying many of the fees to consumers who have already been battered by high inflation in the wake of supply-chain issues resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
Wolfe told Insider that she believed there could be bipartisan agreement on the issue.
"People do not like this type of deceptive behavior," she said. "This is a pocketbook issue that affects everyday Americans."
And there's also another big issue at play as well — tips for hotel workers.
"The resort fee issue isn't just a consumer issue. It's not just impacting people when they go stay at a hotel in Orlando or New York. It impacts hotel workers," Wolfe said. "We're hearing that once hotels start adding resort fees, people are confused, especially in places like New York City."
Eliminating or curtailing resort fees would, in all likelihood, not decrease the overall price of a hotel room. It's likelier than not that hotels will just roll the fees into the topline price. But that transparency would nevertheless be good for consumers, and also good for hotel workers too.
Because of the additional fees, which go to pad hotel owners' profits, Wolfe said that people are skimping on directly tipping the actual workers who clean their rooms.
"They think it's a service charge paying for housekeeping and a porter to bring your bags to the room," she continued to say, "so they stop tipping the hotel staff that really relies off of tips. Hotel workers are really being impacted by those resort fees. It's really hurting them."