‘Spending Money to Get Nothing’: The Latest on Resort Fees

11.10.2023 - 10:53 / nytimes.com / Henry Harteveldt

On a recent trip to the Caribbean island of Antigua, Melissa Middlestadt, a writer from the Toronto area, was charged a $12-a-night resort fee by the all-inclusive Jolly Beach. She was told it covered the use of nonmotorized water-sports equipment and Wi-Fi.

“We challenged them to remove it, but they wouldn’t, which was a bummer because the Wi-Fi was so spotty that it didn’t even reach our room, and the kayak hut had such limited hours that we didn’t get to use those either,” said Ms. Middlestadt, 30, who was traveling with her husband on their honeymoon. “It was spending money to get nothing, which was upsetting and ruined the all-inclusive experience.”

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.”

A pair of new proposals before Congress aims to ban resort fees as a long-fought battle gains new fire. Here’s what you need to know about hotel fees, how to find them and strategies to avoid paying them.

Whether known as “resort fees,” “destination fees” or “urban fees,” these additional charges commonly don’t show up in the room price on an initial online search for accommodations until a consumer clicks through to a payment page to find the nightly rate inflated.

A 2017 Federal Trade Commission report concluded that separating resort fees from room rates made it harder for consumers to compare prices and complicated their searches.

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.”

The industry group American Hotel & Lodging Association said only 6 percent of hotels charge them, averaging $26 a night. Still, they are lucrative; a 2018 report from the tourism analyst Bjorn Hanson, found that hotels rake in nearly $3 billion a year in resort fees.

Nightly fees can range from $10 at the otherwise affordable Freehand Chicago to $50 at the high-end Hotel Casa del Mar in Santa Monica, Calif., which discloses an itemized list of amenities covered by