beachfan

This is nothing compared to the disclosure on late cancellation/no-show penalties on awards.

UA-NYC

Antarius

Fair enough, but this is a very legit complaint, IMO.

Marriott runs these ads about the golden rule - I am confident they wouldn't like it if their suppliers, vendors, franchises or anyone tried to pull the same stunt on them.

Segments

mahasamatman

And businesses never pass on higher taxes/fees/tariffs/surcharges to consumers, right? A 50% tax would double the fees for consumers.

krispy84

I'm less concerned about resort fees per se, other than the vulgar money grab, than their lack of transparency. Such fees should be built into comparative room rates in search engines, as should all mandatory hotel / resort fees. I get mightily pissed off at hotels who tell me the room will be under $200 a night, then suddenly its up to $250 with fees.

EuropeanPete

toomanybooks

seat38a

This year alone, I had to call 3 properties just to figure out what the destination fee included. Marriott does a good job, letting you know there is a resort/destination fee, but trying to figure out what that fee exactly covers is one big CF.

moondog

Marriott does NOT do a good job at disclosing resort fees, even when booking via its own channels. That is the entire point of this thread.

realworld

I've noticed the same thing about parking fees on former Starwood properties. How can they be so inconsistent?

EuropeanPete

I hear this all the time in US debate and really can't understand it. If Marriott could just double resort fees, why don't they just do that now? Pricing in industries like hotels hasn't been based on costs for 50 years.

writerguyfl

While some way see it that way, others do not. No one books a hotel reservation via tweet. This tweet (and this entire thread in my opinion) is irrelevant to the discussion of proper disclosure of the cost of resort fees.

Agreed. I do strongly feel that the resort fee shown on the initial search results screen. But, the cost of the resort fee is disclosed via that blue box immediately when clicking on the hotel to see the exact rooms/rates available.




I concur with CosmicGirl. It would be extremely unlikely that any chain hotel would try to charge "old" reservations any "new" price for a resort fee.

Certainly, it's imprecise language. But, they just write taxes because some fees are required by law. For example, the extra $5/night hotel's must charge in the state of Georgia is called a fee but it's required by law.

This one: https://dor.georgia.gov/state-hotel-motel-faq

If the Georgia government decided to change the fee to $10/night starting tomorrow regardless of when the reservation was made, the disclaimer protects the hotel. And rightfully so (to me), because the hotel doesn't directly benefit from that fee.

rucksack

SightseeMC

Because companies have market sensibilities. There is no appetite for a single mover, even the largest in the industry, to double fee. The fall out from such a solo move would be pretty strongly negative and would probably have an outsized effect on long term revenue.

But if the government taxed all resort fees at 50%, you'd see either:

• a change to the specific category of fee to avoid the letter of the law but still charge you;
• a matching (or more) increase in price to the consumer - because if the tax is uniformly applied, to the consumer it just means "all hotels cost more now";
• or an elimination of resort fees, and an increase in all other revenue streams to cover the lost revenue.

Resort fee revenue is now baked into the bottom line. If it goes away, shareholders will be unhappy. So that revenue will stay, in some form or another.