Fight Back Against Resort Fees & End “Junk Fees”
Resort fees are a scourge at hotels in Orlando and Anaheim near Walt Disney World and Disneyland. These surcharges range from $5/night to over $40, and are hidden so consumers don’t see them when comparison shopping. This post covers why they’re anti-competitive, how “junk fees” might be addressed, and more. (Updated February 8, 2023.)
There are currently over 100 hotels in Orlando and approximately 50 in Orange County, California that charge resort fees. To their credit, Walt Disney World and Disneyland do not charge resort fees. And they probably won’t anytime soon. While there were fears they’d follow the trend a few years ago, Walt Disney World rolled back its resort parking fee in early 2023.
The purpose of this post is to educate consumers about resort fees and other nickel & diming practices of the travel industry, and other advice on offering said pushback. Fortunately, there are ways to “fight back” against resort fees, and that’s what we’ll help you do here. The other good news is that consumers have more leverage than ever to do battle against these anti-consumer practices, and that there’s currently legislation to combat “junk fees” in the hospitality and other industries…
February 8, 2023 Update: Let’s start with the latest development, which comes courtesy of President Biden’s State of the Union address. During that, he spent time discussing the Junk Fees Prevention Act, which is aimed at reducing or eliminating hidden fees and surcharges in travel and other industries.
Biden called on Congress to pass the Junk Fees Prevention Act, which has gained momentum in the last couple of months due to a series of high-profile airline debacles this winter. The proposed legislation would curtail companies charging resort fees at hotels, service fees at concerts and sporting events, seat charges on airlines, and other excess added costs.
“We’re making airlines show you the full ticket price upfront and refund your money if your flight is canceled or delayed,” Biden continued. “Baggage fees are bad enough…they can’t just treat your child like a piece of luggage. Americans are tired of being played for suckers. Pass the Junk Fees Prevention Act so companies stop ripping us off.”
“We’ll ban surprise ‘resort fees’ that hotels tack on to your bill. These fees can cost you up to $90 a night…at hotels that aren’t even resorts,” Biden said to bipartisan chuckles and applause. The response to this is probably key to the legislation’s potential success. While the State of the Union has its share of theatrics and partisanship, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle approved of this message. And for good reason–these fees are wildly unpopular with Americans and the aforementioned airline incidents as well as woes with TicketMaster have shined a spotlight on this anticompetitive behavior.
Last year, the White House released background information on its initiative against these junk fees, which they assert harms free markets. “These fees can also create an uneven playing field for businesses, making firms that price in a fair and transparent manner seem more expensive than their rivals,” the White House said.
This is because certain sellers publish a low price and then add mandatory fees later, at the back-end of the buying process. As the research shows, by concealing the full price, this practice can lead consumers to pay more than they would otherwise, and it also makes it hard for consumers to comparison shop. As we discuss below, booking hotels on travel aggregator sites are a perfect example of this. With the Junk Fees Prevention Act seemingly having support on both sides of the aisle, perhaps 2023 will finally be the year that resort fees become a thing of the past.
For our part, we’ve been “fighting back” against resort fees for about a decade. We occasionally have the chance to meet with hotel managers and operators to discuss their properties. If they charge a resort fee, I always ask why. The explanations typically range from ‘to show consumers we offer more amenities’ or ‘so our pricing is fair as compared to other hotels that don’t have these services.’ I’m not satisfied with these B.S. answers, so I push further. The underlying rationale seems to be because everyone else is doing it.
That attitude is why I believe this post–a departure from the typical tone and substance of our content here–is appropriate and significant. Tourists heading to Walt Disney World and Disneyland are being fleeced by third party hoteliers, including several that are on-site in the Disney Springs, Bonnet Creek, and Crescent Lake Resort Areas. More importantly, there’s something we can do about it.
Those in the hotel industry like to explain away resort fees by comparing them to baggage and other fees charged by the airline industry. While most consumers also don’t like the nickel and diming that has become standard M.O. among the airlines, that’s immaterial, because resort fees are different.
We’re far from fans of baggage fees that the airlines charge, but they are nonetheless not the same as resort fees. The critical distinction is that to avoid baggage fees, you can travel light. Along these lines, parking fees also aren’t quite the same, as you can also avoid that fee by not driving. (Both easier said than done, but that’s slightly beside the point.) There is literally no way to avoid resort fees. Everyone must pay them.
There’s no way to opt-out if you sign a pledge to not use the pool, read a newspaper, or make a cup of coffee. Since the fee is non-optional, literally every guest is paying it, just as every guest is paying the base rate. So there’s no logical argument that can be made to separate the two.
Resort fees aren’t being charged because hotels have elected to go above and beyond in offering a particularly robust slate of resort amenities like a complimentary Porsche to use while at the hotel or an in-room Smurf providing personalized concierge recommendations. (One of those is an actual amenity at a real hotel…sadly, it’s not the latter.) To the contrary, resort fees often have little to do with the amenities offered, and such fees are charged just as often at motels as they are actual resorts. (This motel even charges one. Yeah.)
The real reason hotels charge resort fees is because they make it more difficult for potential guests to ascertain the actual nightly rate. This is particularly true in the era of online booking engines like Expedia and its ilk. Booking engines typically do not show resort fees on the search results page, and only thereafter display them as an asterisk item that there is a fee that isn’t collected by the booking site.
Many travelers never see this fine print, and only learn of the added fee when they arrive at the hotel, by which time it’s typically too late to do anything about it besides grumble a bit, and pay it. Other travelers who see the fees before arrival do so after they’ve already clicked through to start the booking process, making them statistically more like to “convert.” This increased conversion rate metric in turn helps the hotel justify charging a resort fee. In short, hiding the fees is an effective way for hotels to increase bookings.
Per the FTC, fewer than 6% of all hotels in the United States charge resort fees (the percentage is exponentially higher in Florida), fees and surcharges are an incredibly lucrative revenue stream for hotels. According to Consumer Reports, the hotel industry collects roughly $3 billion in resort fee revenue per year. This is a pretty substantial number, and even shocking when considering that the amount has nearly tripled from $1.2 billion in 2004.
Resort fees are effective because they enable hotels to keep their advertised prices low to lure travel planners into the booking process with these cheaper base rates. Only later in the process do guests learn that what they will ultimately pay per night is significantly higher than the advertised rate thanks to the hidden fees.
This practice isn’t just irritating for bargain-hunting tourists. The FTC has called it a “deceptive and unfair trade practice,” and is finally starting to get serious about regulating resort fees. This doesn’t actually mean anything will happen. The FTC is a fairly toothless agency that is big on talk and light on action. The FTC sent a Warning Letter to 22 hoteliers, rebuffing them for the way their resort fees displayed. Nothing changed.
More recently, the District of Columbia attorney general filed a lawsuit against Marriott, accusing the hotel giant of deceptive fee practices. The suit accuses Marriott of employing “an unlawful trade practice called ‘drip pricing’ in advertising its hotel rooms, whereby Marriott initially hides a portion of a hotel room’s daily rate from consumers.” This is commonly labeled as a resort fee. Per the suit, Marriott has “reaped hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade from this deceptive drip pricing.”
This lawsuit has garnered serious public attention, and was borne out of an ongoing investigation conducted by the attorneys general of all 50 states and the District of Columbia into the industry-wide practice of charging mandatory resort fees. While the lawsuit does not seek to outlaw resort fees, it challenges how they’re displayed. Moreover, the public outcry following this suit means a legislative solution is likely–and that’s where the practice of charging non-optional resort fees could be deemed illegal and, ultimately, killed.
We live in an age of slactivism, where hashtag warriors fight the big issues of our day with angry tweets and modified profile pictures. However, this is one situation where the internet can actually empower people to impact change.
Every time I encounter a resort fee in a hotel I review, I belabor the point that these are consumer-unfriendly and hotel chains have been warned about them in the past by the FTC. This is to the point where it’s probably become tiresome for regular readers, but it’s my way of “fighting back” in a small way. Now, I’d encourage you to fight back in a way that actually could lead to positive change. Here’s how…
In terms of marketing, nothing matters more to hotels than their TripAdvisor ranking. Being in the top 10 or on the first page on TripAdvisor for a specific city is huge, and each higher numerical rung is statistically significant in terms of consumer interest, occupancy rate, and competitive equilibrium pricing. There are even TripAdvisor “Reputation Management” Specialists (and software) who consult hotel brands on how to shape their reputation on TripAdvisor.
The simple way to fight back is to review hotels on TripAdvisor, deduct a star (or however much you feel appropriate) for a hotel at which you stayed charging a resort fee, and indicate as much in your review. I would caution against leaving a 1-star review to “balance the scales,” but I don’t think it’s unfair to rate a hotel that was otherwise 4-stars in your mind as 3-stars on TripAdvisor due to the resort fee. For me, it’s certainly star-worthy.
This will not only impact the overall score of the hotel, giving its managers pause about the negative side of their bonus revenue stream, but will bring resort fees to the attention of other potential guests. Someone reading TripAdvisor who may not have been aware of a resort fee will have reason to delve a little deeper, instead of being surprised by a significant additional charge upon check-in.
All it takes is 3 negative reviews for the average TripAdvisor user to rule out using a particular hotel, so it is possible for anyone to fight back against resort fees. Your voices can matter–use them to send the message to hoteliers.
There’s even more you can do. We regularly receive surveys from hoteliers with whom we book and do not book reservations, often in an attempt to lure back customers. When responding, we always bring up resort fees and other practices we view as nickel & diming.
We would strongly encourage you to do the same, using this as an opportunity to voice your displeasure about how the travel industry has attempted to fleece guests in the name of wringing out additional profits. In large part, this has worked for the last decade, as business has been booming and demand was at all-time highs. With an economic downturn or potential recession on the horizon, it’s going to be a very different environment–one where consumers have much more strength. Hotels, airlines, and theme parks will need to do more to compete for the business of guests. We’d strongly encourage you to use your voice to shape their policies going forward. Enough is enough.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of resort fees? Optimistic that 2023 will be the year that the Junk Fees Prevention Act is passed, ending this anti-competitive practice? Do these tacked-on charges bother you as a consumer, or is this much ado about nothing? Have you stayed in a hotel that charges a resort fee? What did you think of it? Any other thoughts or questions? We love hearing from readers, so please share any other thoughts or questions you have in the comments below!
I am hoping that “junk fees” will apply to colleges. With two children in college, I get angry every time I look at the fees added to tuition, such as:
“Academic Excellence” – I expect their academics to be excellent, or I would not be sending my child
“Building Use Fee” – where else are they going to provide classes, besides IN a building
Note: this fee even applies if your class happens to be online
“Student Excellence Fee” – I would think your student would not be admitted if they did not fit this criteria
“Required Activity Fee” – no idea what this even covers
There are also “Operational Fees”, “Technology Fees”, the list goes on and on. These fees often come to as much as the tuition, doubling what you owe.
Disney’s “junk fees” would have to include paying for Genie+!
Now if we could just start fighting back against Government junk fees…
I don’t know how you feel about outside links, but Consumer Reports has been working on this issue and has a petition folks can sign. I’m not sure what lay person would be in favor of these nonsensical, ever-increasing fees, so I wanted to pass this along. Hopefully, the more voices in opposition, the bigger the fire under their rears!
Outside links are always fine so long as they’re not spam. (Usually, petitions *are* considered spam, but that’s only because people have been plastering ones to ‘save splash’ and other nonsense on every single post.)
In this case, please share the petition!
https://action.consumerreports.org/20230112feesftcpetition
Let’s hope we actually get some movement in the right direction!
Just use an EU/UK based hotel aggregator, and prices in the US will be displayed inclusive of all taxes and resort fees. (I don’t understand why US based aggregators don’t offer the option to do this; it would be very popular).
As for downsides, the only thing I’ll miss when they go is the extra clue when guessing Priceline/Hotwire hotels 🙂
I also loathe resort fees and wish the search engine sites would add a filter button to exclude hotels with resort fees from my search. (None do that I know of). I think it would send a pretty strong message if consumers were able to tick a box and remove these hotels from results. The same way travelers seek out certain amenities, I want to have the power actively ‘delete’ brands that operate deceptively.
I hope that this policy will also address “brokerage fees” charged by delivery services, the worst one being UPS. Living in Canada, the only way I can purchase Disney merchandise is through the website, now that they closed down all our Disney Stores. My order was for about $200 + shipping. But than on delivery, UPS charged $66 “brokerage fee” on top of the taxes and customs. It’s a total hidden fee until your package if about to be delivered, there is no opting out, or you don’t get your package. Talk about highway robbery.
Oh My Gosh! That is terrible! I would be so upset.
That has nothing to do with the topic.
Brokerage fees for shipping goods across the border are normal.
I avoid booking places with resort fees and generally won’t book a hotel that charges for parking either – makes it hard to compare the nightly rates when $25-45 extra is added at the end.
Well said Tom. President Biden indeed hit the nail on the head with junk fees that hotels and airlines charge. Want to fly Frontier and sit together? Pay up. Want to stay at a Marriott with a pool? Pay up. It is ridiculous and hope the President can get everyone together on this predatory practice. It’s past time. Will indeed start adding this to my reviews. Thanks.
Thanks for posting this. I’m going to follow your suggestions.
Well I didn’t watch the clown show last night and from what I’ve heard I’m glad I didn’t waste my time but this sounds like there was one good thing mentioned. These fees are absurd, especially for concert tickets or ‘convenience’ fees charged for online purchases. If anything, they should be giving me a discount for paying for utility or other bills or such online instead. And then for using the self-checkout lane at the store?
And ban places from charging for condiments at fast food places. If you don’t charge extra for creamer or sugar for stinky coffee, then you can’t legitimately charge me for BBQ sauce or ranch dressing!
Hey Tom, I thought we were supposed to keep politics out of this forum. To be so disrespectful to a President who doesn’t deserve that treatment is deplorable. Shame on you, MrNico although I guess I’m spitting into the wind here because some have no shame. I guess we can’t expect better from some folks who call themselves Americans.
And so typical of a certain ilk. Having an opinion on something you didn’t even watch.
I agree about the clown show. Clowns fill the room on both sides of the aisle. I didn’t take this as partisan in any way.
I think comparing politicians to clowns is incredibly disrespectful. I want to take this solemn moment to apologize for Mr Nico’s unfortunate remarks to all this countries hard working tv and circus clowns. God bless you Ronald McDonald.
Nico actually didn’t call out one side, he called them all clowns. Therefore, a non-partisan remark 🙂
“A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants.” How can we possibly compare these noble entertainers with politicians? Emitt Kelly an international STAR. the beloved Bozo, Red Skeleton. Actually I’ve always found clowns scary but they’re a heck of a lot less frightening than politicians. I’ll take my chances chasing a Ballon into a sewer than walk into the Capital building. I know there’s got to be a Chineese Ballon joke in this somewhere.
Can we say “Swolphin”, I always read on forums that their rates = a WDW Mod resort rates. Once I add in their resort rate and parking fee my nightly rate jumps up $60 per night:O I am definitely behind getting rid of junk fees. Now if we can do the same for restaurants charging a credit card fee that is more than they actually pay the CC company.
Finally….a bipartisan issue we can all agree upon! Now if we can just find a way to end Robocalls.
Well said, Tom. You’re right that fees that aren’t optional should be bundled in to the base price. The free market can work, but only if there’s price transparency, and resort fees obfuscate that.
i just canceled a reservation to melia hotel with $28 resort fee. im lucky i caught it in time. it was only made obvious after credit card was submited. they do this hoping you wont bother to cancel