Resorting to resort fees

One of the more aggravating aspects of modern life is the seemingly extraneous fees that get added on to ticket purchases. Convenience charge larded on to a ballgame or concert ticket you just forked over big bucks for? Whose convenience are we talking about here? Surely it's more convenient for the venue to deliver the ticket electronically rather than have a living, breathing human being print out - or grab from the stack - the tickets you just bought, put them in an envelope, and make sure they get to the mailroom. Where someone has to stamp the envelope and make sure it gets to USPS. Convenience fee my foot. Gouge fee is more like it.

Even more perplexing are the charges tacked on to a hotel room rate, often dubbed resort fees (even when the hotel isn''t all that much of a resort).

Resort fees are among the most loathed in the travel realm. These are usually mandatory fees that hotels apply to cover amenities such as access to a gym and the internet and less useful things like free local phone calls.

The Biden Administration lumps them in with other “junk fees,” including service charges on concert tickets, late credit card payment penalties and costs to check baggage on an airline.

“They add up to hundreds of dollars a month,” said President Biden, according to prepared remarks for his State of the Union address in February. “They make it harder for you to pay the bills or afford that family trip.” (Source: NY Times)

Not that they should be such a big matter of priority, but there are a couple of proposals scooting around Congress that will create some traveler protection and transparency about these little buggers - little buggers that may not be as big a nuisance as little bed buggers, but which are just as difficult to find out about in advance. You check in, and WOW! JUST WOW!

Things like local taxes, I get, but some of these other fees.  

I've often asked myself why the hotels (and the ticket sellers) don't just add those fees into the baseline cost. After all, we're not dumb. We figure out pretty quickly what the true cost is.

Here's the answer to why not:

Hotels charge fees “to keep their published base rates lower to compete with other hotels in online or mobile tools,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and the founder of Atmosphere Research Group based in San Francisco. “It’s annoying to the traveler because hotels are not being transparent and resort fees are unavoidable.”

Oh. So the hotel gets their rooms booked - good for them! - but ends up with a guest who's pissed off at you from the jump. Even before they get to the room and find hair in the sink, a lightbulb out, a brick wall view, and a par-tay going on in the next room. Even before they get to the room, lift up a corner of the mattress, and spy what looks suspiciously like bed bug scat.

I don't know this for a fact, but I'm guessing that resort fees tend to show up at hotels that are a bit higher up the food chain than Motel 6. So travelers are already prepared to pay a price that's not rock bottom. I may be wrong here, of course. The lower end spots might charge for spotty Wi-Fi or a little box of cornflakes and some rubbery bacon. But I'm still guessing - and I'm generally a reasonably good guesser - that there are more resort fees being charged at the higher-ups.

In any case, as ubiquitous as resort fees seem, a hotel industry trade associations claims that "only 6 percent of hotels charge them, averaging $26 a night." Small potatoes, maybe, but it all adds up to about $3B a year. 

As often as not, you're paying for something you may not want or care to take advantage of.

One swank resort cited in the Times article charges $50 extra for a basic like Internet access, but also include a welcome drink, yoga on the beach, and an hour a day use of a bicycle. Sure, I'll use the Internet access, and wouldn't say no to the welcome drink. Thanks/no thanks for the use of a bicycle to pedal down to the beach for some yoga.

That fee for beach yoga isn't the only oddball resort fee out there. I found a Washington Post round-up from last spring that called out a bunch of them.

One Chicago hotel - love Chicago, but "resort"??? - said their resort fee covered artisanal water. That artisanal water was Costco's Kirkland brand. Me? If something's supposed to be artisanal water, I want it to be hand-bottled by a monk in the Swiss Alps. (The Chicago hotel guest complained and they gave him a couple of bottles of Fiji water.)

Among other amenities that WaPo found bundled under resort fees:

• A luxe Hawaiian resort - minimum room rate: $1,200 per night - tacks on a $50 fee that includes coconut husking for you. There were more reasonable items, like hula, paddleboard, and ukulele lessons, but shouldn't $1.2K per night already include a few of these goodies?
• A small NYC chain promises travelers - only $39-45 a night -  for "filtered water in all sinks and taps." (Maybe if they also filtered the showers and toilet tanks...)
• A pricey DC hotel charges $25 for extras that include a white noise machine. 
• Boston's Hyatt has a fee that provides guests a ticker for a  couple of bucks off a trolley tour (which they probably get for free from the trolley tour company), and also offers a cup of Boston clam chowder. (At least it's not that Manhattan clam chowder abomination.)
• In Portland, Oregon, there's a hotel that comes with free use of a pool table, and a free shoe shine (subject to availability) - free in exchange for the $26 a night resort fee. (Bet that hotel's money's safe with the shoe shine promise, given that most Portland travelers are probably wearing sneakers, hiking boots, or Birkenstocks. Maybe the Doc Marten wearers would be wanting the shoeshine.) 
• The Greenbrier in West Virginia has a $39 resort fee that entitles guests to use their walking and meditation trails. I guess the alternative would be walking in the halls and meditating in your room, but these trails sure seem like they should already come with.
• There's a resort in San Diego that has a resort fee that's strictly for the birds. In addition to the usual suspects - WiFi, pool towels, beach chairs - you can look in on the hotel's "bird exhibit, featuring macaws, cockatoos and a lilac-crowned Amazon parrot who are on display daily."
• An upper-end Holiday Inn in Orlando has a $49 per night resort fee that lets you participate in something that sounds a lot like criminality in training. The Bank Heist Laser Challenge lets folks, armed with laser devices, enter a room that contains the entrance to a bank vault. In the room, you can "masterfully maneuver the security beams at this bank vault to complete your mission of getting rich quick.” No word on what's behind the door. Do you actually get rich quick? Do you get your resort fee refunded> Inquiring minds...

Even though it's only a small percentage of hotels charging resort fees, if you want to avoid the 6 percent that do, there's this:

...the website ResortFeeChecker.com can help with its searchable database of hotels.

Happy travels! And if you can't get around the resort fee, enjoy that coconut husking.