I recently checked-out from Sofitel Washington and saw a new oddity on my invoice : a USD20 "resident fee" is charged every day on top of the rate and applicable taxes. And in fact it was mentioned on my booking at the end (I didn't notice it). Interestingly, you pay some taxes also on this resident fee (USD 2.96).
This is a very bad practice and totally unjustified IMO. This is obviously to cheat the systems and artificially not increase the rates. It reminds me the fuel surcharge of airlines some years ago, surcharges that never disappeared after fuel price went down and was charged in the taxes instead of the airfare.
Open question at that stage :
- is that specific to this hotel or is that a new "Accor thing", or something regional ?
- is that charged per person staying in the room (I can't assess this as I was by myself, but I would tend to say no as my booking below says "per room and per day" but the name of this fee could let us think it is charged per guest) ?
- will we earn points on this fee ? My gut feeling says no...(my points have not posted yet, so I don't know and even when they will post, I will struggle to know as I cannot precisely know the amount of eligible expenses from the details (or lack of) on the invoice).

We should raise our voices against that kind of practices