The Dreaded and Despised Resort Fee
 

Although not exactly Hyatt specific
Does anyone find value in these fees with so called added amenities?

I thought these links would make for some interesting reading regarding resort fees

http://www.investopedia.com/articles...esort-fees.asp

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...106-story.html

Yes, interesting reading. I fully agree that the resort fee should be part of the room rate, due to the fact that the fee is mandatory. Advertising a low room rate, then adding a mandatory fee, is false advertising IMO.

Don't they show you the total cost including everything prior to purchasing a room at all major hotel chains?

Yes, after initial fake rate tricks your into getting to purchase or summary page. This practice is indeed deceptive. Anything other than government mandated taxes is the cost of doing business unless its an optional addon.

so, you're saying that you have to approve the charge prior to staying there by officially looking at the total cost???

it is beyond me why anyone would support proliferation of hidden charges in everyday life but ymmv of course...

It doesn't appear in the cost until you're ready to click "confirm" for that specific property.

It's during the "shopping" phase that this is an annoying practice.
When comparing prices, this mandatory fee isn't included. Only after clicking thru a few pages do you see the hotel saying "that comparative price we showed you was just click-bait to lure you to select our hotel. The actual price is $30 a night higher but we're hoping you don't notice and click the 'confirm' button anyhow." :(

If it were an optional fee that you could pt-out of if you truly only want a place to sleep then it would be fine. But since it's mandatory, then it's deceptive when not including it in the comparative shopping price.

Since room rates are generally taxed much higher than resort fees, I'm surprised that no local tax collectors have tried to outlaw resort fees. Seems to me that the practice could be viewed as a way for hotels to dodge taxes. Although, I'm not sure that's good for guests. As annoying as resort fees are, if that part of the bill gets placed back in the room rate, the overall bill would increase (in places where the tax rates differ).

I'm also surprised that franchisees haven't complained about how resort fees affect search listings. It's less of a problem if all area hotels have resort fees. But, in mixed-markets the hotels without resort fees are at a competitive disadvantage. If hotel A is $90/night with no resort fee and hotel B is $75/night plus $25 resort fee, that puts hotel A at a disdvantage. If I owned hotel A, I'd be pressing the brand to have mandatory fees shown in the initial search results on the official website.

I agree this is usually a bs fee. Paying for for a beach resort room should include lounges and umbrella on the beach. Also hotel status usually gives most of the perks that they charge for resort fee but don't discount it.

I hate them as well, really irritates me and when I am booking somewhere like Florida I will make an effort (not always successfully) to try to avoid them. Just add that cost into the reservation rate. They always try to say it includes X,Y,Z and many times its stuff someone who is a Diamond should be getting for free anyway like WiFi. This may be slightly off topic, but I remember when I never had to deal with them in Vegas. Then I think maybe it was during the post economic malaise when travel to places like Vegas got hit and they drop room rates to almost nothing but then resort fees started popping up in the small print.

I'm supportive of people paying attention to when they're booking their flights, hotels, car rentals, etc so they know what they're purchasing and what they arent. Resort fees, checked bag fees, seat assignment fees, etc etc etc arent hard to figure out and ALWAYS are spelled out in the reservation. Some folks just arent bright enough to figure it out, and I dont think we should have every company on earth lower the bar so the room temperature IQs can figure out life.

In addition to the resort fees not being subject to taxes in some jurisdictions, I suspect that they're also not only exempt from earning points in some programs but also not eligible for travel agent and chain/booking service commissions.

Some organizations consider resort fees to be personal expenses on business trips and will not reimburse them, although there can be government or corporate rates that don't charge resort fees.

Extremely supercilious attitude.

The fact remains that it is bait-and-switch -- if you search for hotels on Expedia and choose the lowest-priced one, but then you have to go all the way to payment before finding out that it really isn't, that's pretty much the definition of b&s, and intelligence has nothing to do with the fact that you've just wasted your time for no good reason.

On the Marriott forum we've started adding resort fee details (cost, what it includes) via wikis on properties where we know they've got resort fees. Of course that only helps folk who read about the properties on FT, but it does provide some info. It's interesting - some resort fees barely include anything; others include quite a bit, so what you get can really vary.

The big pet peeve (at least on the Marriott forum; not sure about Hyatt) is when the resort fee includes free internet, something that elites get anyway & yet the resort fee isn't discounted because of it.

Cheers.

I'm supportive of treating ALL respectful customers with respect, without requiring an IQ test.

Checked bags, seat assignment etc are optional fees whlie resort fee is mandatory. Thankfully we had a ruling on airline related deceptive advertising (wrt leaving out mandatory fuel surcharges) - the precedent for bait and switch pricing in the industry is clearly there. Hope someone will get to hotels and cars next...

I dont think trusting the advertised price puts someone in "not bright enough" category...

It's absolutely bait-and-switch. That's exactly why they do it this way - to draw customers in, because some percentage will just keep going once they've invested the time to complete the booking details.

It also puts the honest hotels at a competitive disadvantage.

It's a deceptive practice and I look forward to the lawsuit that puts it to a stop.

Ok - just a little word of warning here - the posts are getting a bit testy in here - please discuss the subject and not each other. On the subject itself, while the issue of Resort Fee is not exclusively Hyatt, we've decided to let the thread stay in the forum since it's not entirely off topic and could really belong in any of the hotel forums. We've chosen to let the choice of forum by the OP stand. Thanks!!

Peteropny - co-mod - Hyatt

Another reason for resort fees has to do with taxes, in some cases that portion of the bill is tax exempt if it is a separate resort fee, but that would not be the case if those charges were part of the room rate.

I have no problem with resort fees as long as they are transpatently disclosed at the time of booking. Of course, in cases where it really is a bait and switch tactic used by hotels, then I would have a problem with that.

[QUOTE=MikeFromTokyo;25699844]Another reason for resort fees has to do with taxes, in some cases that portion of the bill is tax exempt if it is a separate resort fee, but that would not be the case if those charges were part of the room rate.

I have no problem with resort fees as long as they are transpatently disclosed at the time of booking. Of course, in cases where it really is a bait and switch tactic used by hotels, then I would have a problem with that.[/QUOTE

It's not the resort fee that bothers me. It's that the resorts that I'm staying at shouldn't charge more for things that average hotels give for free. On a businees trip most give me these for free but on a family vacation that cost alot more I need to pay for them.

The Dreaded and Despised Resort Fee
 

Hyatt centric in Miami is charging this fee. And they are not even on the beach.

Thank you for pointing this out. I'm headed to Miami in a few weeks and was considering this property. After reading this, I will happily stay elsewhere.

Here are the terms of this property's resort fee.

A daily Resort Fee of $20.00 plus tax per day will be added to your rate and includes premium internet access, two beach chairs and towels, two welcome bottles of water, use of hotel bikes, world cinema in-room Bluetooth, 24 hour Stay Fit access, and daily newspaper.

My primary concerns over resort fees are two-fold:
1) the creep to add this fee to urban/suburban hotels without resort amenities on-property; and;

2) the charging of elites for services or products via the resort fee which items elites should receive free as part of status benefits (newspaper, higher speed internet, bottled water, admission to hotel gym or workout center, etc). Put another way, what's the point of earning elite status when booking at resort fee properties, if a no-status person can buy these same benefits for $15-$20/day, esp. if the property is not known to upgrade elites readily?

Agree with both of your concerns.

Cheers. Sharon

I haven't stayed at any hotels charging resort fees outside of Vegas lately, but my experience has been that many properties will waive or lower the fees for top elites. I've even had my resort fees waived a couple of times at MLife properties in Vegas, although that's fairly rare especially since I don't have a casino host.

I've had some favorable consideration re resort fees at some HY properties.

At Starwood, corporate policy requires that resort-fee properties designate alternate amenities to be given elites in return for the resort fee. It can be a discount of the resort fee or something else which the resort fee doesn't cover. Thus it's not uniform. It can be a valuable trade-off for the resort fee or it can be negligible. Up to the property.

Makes it difficult to do comparisons between suppliers.

X provides a service for Y$
Z provides a service for Y+$10

X charges a $25 resort fee. Z doesn't. You don't get to see this until you check out. You initially chose X because all things equal, you thought X was cheaper. It wasn't.

Z decides to reduce it's price by $20 but charge a $30 resort fee. Who is cheaper now? (don't worry - it's not a trick question). This then becomes doubly difficult when talking about airlines....

As far as resort fees, I haven't done too many comparisons, but when one property charges a resort fee, all of the other nearby hotels usually charge a resort fee. It's a lot like being charged for parking.

Resort fees are a lot like parking fees in that different properties will charge different resort fees. In Las Vegas, the nicer properties charge higher resort fees so there does seem to be a strong correlation between resort fees and room prices.

The only thing that makes sense to me is to think in terms of total cost (i.e. do not itemize) and to not have an emotional reaction to being charged fees.

Compare the total cost of staying at hotel A with the total cost of staying at hotel B.

Exactly. And DOT has declared this to be an unfair and deceptive business practice with respect to airfares, and requires airlines to show it the full price up front.

How deceptive are these resort fees with Hyatt? At every hotel where I have encountered them, they are clearly stated at the time of booking, so there are no surprises.

If a grand total including taxes and fees is stated at the time of booking, I say it is the guest's responsibility to understand.

Also, while the hotels may say the fee covers x,y,z amenities/services, in reality I think that tax exemption is a big reason for resort fees as opposed to just charging higher rates that include those costs.

?? I'm not very familiar with the DOT ruling you're referring to, but this article seems to indicate that it applies to having available seats for the advertised price, not ancillary fees: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/a...r-fare-ads.ece

The DOT ruling may also apply to ancillary fees, but if that's the case both Spirit and Allegiant violate upfront disclosure of ancillary fees on every advertised airfare. I haven't dug through a Spirit fare comparison in quite a while, but Allegiant goes as far as charging different luggage fees on different domestic flights. There's a baggage fee table on this webpage: https://www.allegiantair.com/popup/o...-services-fees
Finding out the exact fare for an Allegiant flight is not an easy task.

I got a chance to watch how bad the baggage fees can be when I was checking in for a Vueling flight in Paris a couple of years ago. The person in front of me hadn't paid for a checked bag (I think her boyfriend bought her ticket) and she had one (overweight +) oversized and one normal bag. The cost of her luggage far exceeded the airfare and (prepaid) bags that I paid for two of us.

While I'd like to see additional transparency on resort fees, I'm not holding my breath. While we're at it, I'd like to see additional transparency on parking fees.

Just went to Kayak for comparison shopping. It showed a rate of $379 for the Hyatt Regency via Hotels.com (and various other sites). Only once I click "Select" and get taken to hotels.com, do I see in tiny font (compared to the bold big rate of $379) that the rate shown to me excludes a daily $31.41 daily resort fee.

So basically what Kayak showed me, $379, was a lie. I can apparently force kayak to tell me the truth by selecting "Nightly + local taxes and fees" in a drop down list, but that's not the default.

I'm tired of resort fees that include items that I either get or got as part of my status or for things that I never use, such as local & 800 telephone calls.

At the Hyatt Waikiki, they have always provided beach chairs for free. All of a sudden, with the advent of the resort fee, the chairs are now included in it :rolleyes:

I can't remember the last time I used a hotel phone to call anyone except the front desk or housekeeping.

In that regard, I feel they are just listing items to justify a ridiculous amount of money for using the "resort."

Of course one tries to compare total costs, but resort fees (and other junk fees) can be treated differently for tax and service fees as well as point earning rules.

It's deceptive not to show the full cost up front. Suck you in by advertising a low price, and not disclose the full price until you're about to pay is the essence of bait and switch. That's not my opinion, that's the DOT reg.

I'm not talking about ancillary fees. I'm talking about airfare. Some airlines (WN, for example) used to advertise airfare prices before taxes and fees. That's been deemed an unfair and deceptive practice.

It's called the "Full Fare Advertising Rule."

Exactly.

Not to worry, I think it's only a matter of time before the CFPB wades into the water on this topic. I have no problem with optional fees that actually provide valued options. But mandatory "fees" that provide no extras of real value are deceptive at best.

Some hotels in various chains exempt award nights from their resort fees. Those who do not, are evading the free-ness of the award nights, which correctly should mean "room provided with zero money paid by the customer to the hotel &or its chain."

Marriott charges resort fees on award redemptions, Hyatt does not. I'm not sure whether there's an overall Hilton policy, but HHV waives for elites.

OK, thanks for the clarification. I thought that you were referring to the ancillary fees.