PRACTICAL TRAVELER
Resort Fees: Hotel Rate May Not Include All the Charges
By CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT
With room prices and occupancy rates soaring, many hotels are again quietly imposing resort fees, unpopular surcharges that cover everything from the use of a pool to housekeeping tips.

With the decline in the lodging industry after 9/11, the fees, which cover everything from the use of a pool to housekeeping tips, began to vanish — if not from hotels' policies, then from guests' bills. A polite complaint was usually all it took to have a fee waived.

No longer. With room prices and occupancy rates soaring, many hotels are again quietly imposing these unpopular surcharges. And this time, the industry has devised new strategies to make the extras stick. Hotel companies like RockResorts are improving the disclosure of the fees by adding notifications to their Web sites, sending prearrival e-mail messages to guests and alerting travel agents. They are offering detailed descriptions of what the charges cover. And increasingly, some are refusing to remove fees when a customer complains.