Hilton No Longer Hiding Fees, Pushing Custom Packages Instead
Jennifer Billock December 29, 2015
Hilton banishes hidden fees in favor of a special extras package offered to guests at check-in.
So long, extra charges for Wi-Fi, parking and newspapers. Hilton Worldwide is tossing those hidden fees to the side, offering guests special package options instead. The program is called Little Extra Upgrades and gives visitors the option to pay $25 to $35 per night in exchange for in-room Internet, a premium coffee brewer, snacks, candy, drink vouchers, fruit and water. For the food and drinks, guests can opt to have delivery right to their room, or they can decide on access to a 24-hour snack room.
“This is a way hotels can be upfront and say, ‘You have a choice,'” Bjorn Hanson, hotel fee expert and professor at New York University’s Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism, told the Los Angeles Times. “I think it’s a positive way of having fees and surcharges.”
Hanson thinks other hotels will copy the program, with customized packages all their own. He predicts some hotels will put together special packages for business travelers as well.
“I think we are going to see many variations on this,” he said.
The Little Extra Upgrades package was introduced in Hilton hotels earlier this month and is rolling out to DoubleTree properties in the U.S. this week.
The amount brought in by hotel fees, hidden or not, increases every year. In 2014, hotels, on the whole, brought in $2.35 billion in fees. 2015 is on track to beat that record with fee-based income at $2.47 billion.
[Photo: DoubleTree]
If I told my employer that I had to pay $25-$35/night for internet, he'd suggest I stay at a different hotel...
How much of this will be available to Diamonds at a discount / free?
The headline here is misleading. The LA Times article linked says this is a new experiment only at (normal, not primarily resort) DoubleTree hotels. This DOES NOT mean that Hilton is getting rid of resort fees at resorts, does it? But that's what the headline here at FlyerTalk implies! All this seems to be is a way to pay for a package of things you otherwise might be nickel-and-dimed for. But that's the not the main fees that travelers are complaining about; the main fees that travelers are complaining about are resort fees, and this is not at all a promise to get rid of those. So, in the spirit of the season, I say: Bah, humbug!