Hidden Hotel Resort Fees & Other Bogus Junk Fees Might Finally End.
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 October 13, 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 eliminated parking fees for hotel guests in 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 a new FTC proposed rule to combat “junk fees” in the hospitality and other industries…
October 13, 2023 Update: Let’s start with the latest development, which is that the Federal Trade Commission announced a new proposed rule this week to prohibit junk fees, which are hidden and bogus fees that can harm consumers and undercut honest businesses that show actual prices upfront. The FTC has estimated that these fees can cost consumers tens of billions of dollars per year in unexpected costs.
“These junk fees now cost Americans tens of billions of dollars per year—money that corporations are extracting from working families just because they can,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “By hiding the total price, these junk fees make it harder for consumers to shop for the best product or service and punish businesses who are honest upfront. The FTC’s proposed rule to ban junk fees will save people money and time, and make our markets more fair and competitive.”
During the initial public comments period about the proposed FTC rule, a chorus of over 10,000 comments made clear that consumers are fed up with hidden fees for everything from booking hotels and resort fees to buying concert tickets online. Many consumers said that sellers often do not advertise the total amount they will have to pay, and disclose fees only after they are well into completing the transaction. Businesses often misrepresent or do not adequately disclose the nature or purpose of certain fees, leaving consumers wondering what they are paying for or if they are getting anything at all for the fee charged.
The proposed rule will save consumers more than 50 million hours per year of wasted time spent searching for the total price in live-ticketing and accommodations alone, according to FTC estimates. This time savings is equivalent to more than $10 billion over the next decade.
The proposed rule would require businesses to include all mandatory fees upfront in pricing, making it easier for consumers to comparison shop for the lowest price. The proposed rule would also have enforcement teeth, allowing the FTC to secure refunds for harmed consumers and seek monetary penalties against companies that do not comply with its provisions.
To accomplish this, the proposed rule would ban the following junk fee practices that consistently confuse and trick consumers:
- Hidden Fees – Businesses routinely engage in bait-and-switch pricing tactics that hide mandatory fees and deceive consumers about the price. This is because fees revealed later in the booking process, but before the purchase is made, significantly increase the total that consumers pay. Accordingly, the proposed rule would prohibit businesses from advertising prices that hide or leave out mandatory fees; and
- Bogus Fees – The rule would prohibit sellers from misrepresenting fees and require them to disclose upfront the amount and purpose of the fees, whether they are refundable and under what circumstances.
These provisions are aimed at ensuring businesses will no longer be able to lure consumers with artificially low prices that they later inflate with mandatory fees or to deceive consumers about the nature and purpose of fees.
The proposed FTC rule would provide a level playing field for honest businesses by requiring total prices to be quoted at the start of the purchasing process, and to remove false or misleading information about fees from the marketplace.
This all has gained momentum over the last several years thanks to FTC statements, consumer advocacy and, most recently, a series of high-profile airline debacles this winter. The proposed policy would curtail companies charging resort fees at hotels, service fees at concerts and sporting events, seat charges on airlines, and other excess added costs.
As a result, President Biden mentioned this proposal during his State of the Union Address earlier this year. “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–a rare moment of that during the address.
The bipartisan support to this is probably key to the FTC rule’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.
This practice is anti-consumer 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 proposed FTC rule seemingly having support on both sides of the aisle and with a broad swath of the American public, 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 FTC enacts a rule to finally end 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!
Thanks for giving us a way to make a difference. I always check tripadvisor, and you’re right about consumers taking notice of the reviews. We stayed on grounds at WDW two visits ago. Last November, it was cheaper to stay in a nearby condo and pay the daily parking fee at each park then it was to stay in a Disney hotel. We booked through VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owner). The two of us stayed in a lovely three bedroom condo very close to the parks. Thanks again for all of the information you share!
As others have stated, your article is on point. What exacerbates the resort fees are the parking fees and the multi-layered govt and special district tax regimen. Having stayed at the Wyndham Bonnet Creek and Disney Springs for years. Their parking, resort fees and the taxes per night are now 40% of room rate in addition to the room. I realize that for the most part hotels have minor input on the taxes but it all adds up. You offer some good advice to push back at these fees. I also am concerned and aggravated about the parking fees at Disney resorts as well. We stay semi-annually at the Boardwalk and Aninal Kingdom Lodge, when you’re paying 400+ a night or more, the parking fee in a half filled lot is insulting. Hopefully it’s not a precursor to resort fees. If Disney moves to resort fees, my Disney Annual Passholder days are done after 15+ years,
I so agree. Resort fees are a total money grab. I’m in the process of planning a trip to Disney/Universal this summer for my son’s 16th Birthday and it’s been so hard finding a hotel/motel that doesn’t charge an arm and a leg for this bullsheep fee. I finally settled on a place that I felt wasn’t totally ripping me off and wasn’t a roach motel to boot. I was thinking about booking at a Disney resort, but I just can’t justify paying to park when I’d already be paying a premium price just to stay at on Disney property. Walt Disney is probably rolling in his grave to see what his dream has become, a nightmare of greed, greed and more greed.
I have stayed at several places and was charged a resort fee. I remember that I once asked what it included. I was told exactly what you said,”hotel amenities “. I feel so taken advantage of by these places. Thanks for the information on fighting back. I have a chance now to make a difference.
I agree with the parking fee being to much! Most of them are only a 1/3 full
I think I can do one better.
We have a timeshare and we trade into Disney Saratoga Springs. Our last trade was the last week the resorts were open.
It was a Friday to Friday week and we rolled the dice. Well as we all know as we got into the early part of the week the parks were shut down. No problem we will tack the bus and visit new resorts until transportation shut down. So amenities were being reduced during our stay.
When you trade to a resort there is a trade fee. Fine and good but when you trade into a Disney property they have a $190 resort fee for pools , movies under the stars, transportation, gyms. All of which were curtailed during our stay. I reached out to the front desk about getting a refund for part of the resort fees due to them not being available. The front desk says they they collect the fee for RCI. I reach out to RCI and they say they collect the fee for Disney. So each one is saying they collect the ger for each other and I am left hanging left out to dry.
I agree 100% with you. The parking fees at the Disney resorts were the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I wrote them a lengthy letter expressing my dismay. I told them they were pricing the average family out of visiting Disney and I was sure this was not what Walt Disney would approve of.
They did call me to follow up telling me hotels in NY City charge for parking. I told them parking in the city was at a premium but the number of times I stayed at Disney I never had difficulty finding a parking place.
I told them how disappointed and sad this made me. The Magic was dimming.
I certainly will rate them accordingly on Trip Advisor.
Thank you for your articles and suggestions.
A few years ago we stayed at a golf resort that we discovered had a fairly hefty resort fee. In going over all the amenities that were included in the resort fee, 90% were not available during our stay because it was winter and all the outside amenities were closed. They would not refund a portion of the fee. That was our last visit there and we will not go again.
Resort fees really get under my skin. I the past I have actually found some online booking quotes for weekday Las Vegas Strip rooms were the hard to find daily “resort fee” was actually MORE than the per night charge quoted for the room.
Our last stay in Baltimore, Md before a flight ended with an extra fee charged to us when we arrived and paid the bill. When I saw that my husband had paid extra, I took the bill back downstairs and had that charge removed. They tried to tell me it was standard. I had the computer print out of my total charges in my hand and there was nothing on it that said anything about an extra charge. After bringing in the manager and looking over my printout from Park-Sleep-Fly, they begrudgingly took it off our credit card..
a number of years ago, airlines were forced to disclose fees and taxes in their pricing- it used to be that their price was $100, but when you paid for it, the total was all of a sudden $125… this same law should be applied to hotel pricing… if I book a hotel online that says $100/night, the price should not all of a sudden be $125/night.
When staying at a Disney resort and you drive or rent a car you should not be charged for parking at that resort. Last time we stayed at the Music resort I was charged $13 per night to park. Nickel and dimming the customer seems to be the new norm for Disney and it needs to stop. I complained at the counter to no avail. With the way things are now with unemployment and the economy,Disney needs to rethink their policies and try to help their customers make their trip Magical.
Great article. Resort fees are not fair and very underhanded. We drove and paid the parking fee and I think it was so wrong of Disney. We are driving our next trip and i plan to start doing all you have suggested on Trip Advisor and with the Disney hotel we chose this time. This has to stop.
It is up to us.
The resort Parking is a very short sighted move from Disney. Speaking to other UK visitors it has completely changed how they organise their holidays. Some have moved to stay at a Universal resort – yes they too charge resort parking but some of the room Options and benefits make it more Appealing than WDW. Some have decided to
Split their stay between WDW and UO so they don’t need a car! Either of these options reflect a greater loss to WDW than not charging to park. In reality you can forgive UO for charging for parking as they have limited real estate but this is not true of WDW and it’s just being greedy.
I am going to do this for all the car parking fees at Disney.
Resort fees are such a slimy practice. If Disney started to do this, they would put themselves in a sleazy category.
We’ll be paying a resort fee of $45 for our tentative one night stay at the Palazzo in Vegas. Trying to find a decent, updated and family friendly hotel in Vegas and dealing with the resort fees was eye-opening. We’re only staying there with our kids so our teen can see it first hand at the end of a week’s trip to Grand Canyon. (We opted to drive to Boulder City to stay our first night on way to Grand Canyon)
And, I just checked our reservation at El Tovar in Grand Canyon, and alas they also have a resort fee.
We found out on our last trip to WDW Beach in March that we were charged for 2 cars because we had 2 rooms (but only 1 car) I found this out when we got home and reported it to the Bookkeeping office and asked them to check our recent reservations. They got back to me and said they were crediting me for the extra car parking fee for our LAST 3 trips..I had never noticed!
Excellent Article, clearly stated problem with a clearly stated solution! Excellent Advice – I will follow the practice you recommend and deduct one or two stars from any review I write as well as clearly stating why.
Thank!
I stayed at the Hilton on Disney property in Orlando for $75 a night a year ago. They did NOT mention the $40 a night resort fee and nearly $30 parking, which essentially doubled what I thought I was paying. Absolutely despicable and am going to rate them 2 stars as a result. Please everyone fight back against this, and thank you Tom for bringing up this issue that these terribly greedy hotel chain are trying to get away with.
We are a family of 12 with 5 rooms and 2vehicles in October (God willing) at the Wilderness Lodge. It will cost $50.00 a day for 4 nights. That’s quite a big fee. Not happy but don’t have any choice. Would love to plead my case but don’t know to who.
Are you flying? I would seriously consider using Magical Express instead of the cars.
Any more we try to use the magical express because the cost of the rental car plus parking fees are ridiculous. We finally decided if we have to take an Uber here or there it is still cheaper than the rental car fee plus the parking charges.
But maybe you are driving to Disney, which then this won’t help…
Thanks for highlighting this. My reviews, in the future, will go down 1 or 2 stars because of resort fee. Stayed in Key West in February before all of this started, and every single nice hotel I was considering charged a huge resort fee. Stayed at Hyatt Centric and paid something like $45 a night. What did we get for this? Bottled water. What a rip off. I guess the only way to get them where they hurt is not to stay at those hotels but sometimes it’s just not possible if they all are charging. I get why certain hotels charge a resort fee (although they could just add it to the nightly cost of hotel room and be done with it) when parking is a premium (big city for example). But Disney has the space–there’s no reason to charge except greed.
Disney has been acting like Scrooge McDuck before his conversion for quite some time. It’s affecting my attitude toward Disney. Last trip (Nov. 2018) was awful–they took so many things away, couldn’t find things they had advertised, no Voices of Liberty (only on select days), etc., I felt like I was at some two bit carney show. Let’s see what happens when they are desperate for guests. And let’s not forget this when times get better and we are traveling more. Voice your concerns to every cast member you can.
I found this article very informative. We travel to Hawaii a lot, and virtually all the hotels have resort fees. I had no idea that it’s so uncommon in the rest of the country. I really dislike that the discount sites don’t reveal the resort fee until I’m ready to purchase. For the most part I think resort fees are a rip off. I’ve only stayed at one hotel where I felt that the resort fee was giving me something above and beyond a regular hotel stay. Disney hotels do not offer that kind of service.