Somewhere on this site, I'm sure I've complained about hotel Resort Fees. For those of you who don't know how these work, here's how they work…
You go online in search of vacation lodging and find a great price at the Hotel Trousers — $18 a night. You book it and then find out that the hotel charges a mandatory Resort Fee of $12 a night. This covers High Speed Wireless Internet, admittance to the Fitness Center, a copy of USA Today each morning, a couple of bottles of water and a glass of buttermilk. It doesn't matter that you didn't bring your laptop, don't believe in exercise, can't read, prefer tap water to bottled and are Lactose Intolerant. You have to pay the fee. So your $18 room is really $30.
For obvious reasons, a lot of folks object to these fees, especially when they only tell you about them in really tiny type. According to this, the F.T.C. is considering a ban on such and so are some legislative bodies. I wish they'd leave them be.
Here's why. The way I see it, abolishing Resort Fees is not going to give the traveler in our example the $18 room for $18. The hotel will merely mark it up to $30.
And then since they don't need to separate out those amenitities to build a package for which they can charge their Resort Fees, they'll be able to separate them out as options and charge for them. Suddenly, there'll be an additional fee for the High Speed Internet like there used to be. There'll be an additional fee for the Fitness Center, you'll have to buy those bottles of water and your USA Today, etc.