On one hand, it pushed airlines to drop change fees on most fares as virtually everyone who had a ticket in early 2020 looked to cancel. On the other, extra cleaning pushed fees up in vacation rental homes.
But the pandemic certainly isn’t the only source of added fees, especially when it comes to accommodations. Travelers have long complained about the shock of finding a deal on a hotel for $100 only to learn it doesn’t include the $45-a-night resort fee, a charge undergoing new legal scrutiny.
Though the dust has yet to settle on industry norms, the following are updates on unwelcome charges that travelers may see on their next lodging bill.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, resort fees — supplements charged for access to things like swimming pools and Wi-Fi — have been around since 1997. The hotel industry defends them as a way to keep costs down for the individual by spreading them to everyone.
Resort fees are not common. According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, only 7 per cent of hotels in the US charge them. Still, they irk travelers, and earlier this year, the nonprofit advocacy group Travelers United sued MGM Resorts International for deceptively advertising rates that don’t include the mandatory fees, which can run $35 to $45 a day at its Las Vegas properties.
“Hotels have now made fees mandatory. If they’re mandatory, they should be included in the rate,” said Charles Leocha, the president and co-founder of Travelers United. He added that during the pandemic, many hotels closed the sort of amenities, like pools, that resort fees were said to cover, yet continued to collect the fees.
In a win for consumers, Marriott International recently settled a lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania’s attorney general over its resort fees, agreeing to disclose fees along with rates. The hotel company responded that it will be “working over the next several months to update the room rate display in accordance with that agreement,” according to a statement.
Rather than bundling them into room rates, many hotels have made resort fees more explicit. The Phoenician, a Marriott Luxury Collection resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, for example, has a resort fee page on its website, indicating what guests get for their daily fee of $45 per room fee: Wi-Fi (worth, it states, $14.95), morning yoga ($30), one hour of tennis ($75), one hour of pickleball ($75), bikes ($35) and a craft tasting.
Hotels have yet to recover from the pandemic — according to the AHLA, room revenue is expected to be down nearly $44 billion in 2021 compared to 2019 — potentially making fees more attractive.
“My research shows that large, full-service, resort hotels have been hurt particularly badly by Covid, and they’re still reeling from its effects,” John W O’Neill, a professor and the director of the Hospitality Real Estate Strategy Group at Pennsylvania State University, wrote in an email. He added that some have adopted “partitioned pricing,” the kinds of fees that are mandatory but earmarked for a service, like baggage fees at airlines or resort fees that cover Wi-Fi and more at hotels.
For now, some have put fees on hold. The new Hilton Santa Monica Hotel & Suites, where amenities include a rooftop pool, has waived the standard resort fee, and charges $9.95 for basic Wi-Fi and $14.95 for faster service. It doesn’t plan to add the $39 charge until 2023, which will then also cover beach yoga and loaner bikes.
Mohonk Mountain House in New York’s Hudson Valley recently dropped its 15 per cent administration fee. To cover the costs of rising wages and supplies, it plans to increase rates in 2022 by about 7 per cent.
Though intense cleaning has proved not nearly as important as mask-wearing and air circulation in preventing the spread of Covid-19, nonetheless fortified cleaning protocols remain in place across the accommodation spectrum. Among vacation rentals, the extra cleaning required of the pandemic took more time and materials, pushing guest fees up.
“When the world opened up again, the cleaning requirements needed to be improved,” said Joseph DiTomaso, the founder and chief executive of AllTheRooms, a vacation rental market analytics firm, which found that cleaning fees have been rising since 2017 but accelerated after October 2020, when travel began to rebound.
— The New York Times
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