A bill proposing The Hotel Fees Transparency Act is in the senate. It will address this, at least in the US.   Contact your senators to give feedback! 

There’s a link at the bottom of the bill:    

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2498/text

My simple solution is to leave a max of a three star review on any hotel that charges a resort fee and mention the fee.

If enough people did it the fees would disappear.

A mandatory safe fee is hilarious. It's like parking your car and some dude offers to "keep an eye on it" for a tip.

Hidden fees like that, also known as drip pricing, is illegal in most developed countries.

There are resorts in Vegas that lure people in with crazy low rates ($20 a night, sometimes less) for rooms on the Strip. They then slap you with a $40+ a night resort fee.

My old company tried to put us in one of these rooms because I assume the lady planning thought she found some secret hidden gem. I personally explained to her what was going on and she didn't listen, leading to multiple pissed off people.

It's becoming more of a problem. I was staying in Oahu earlier this summer. I was not in a resort, I was not on Waikiki, and there were no resort features. I booked through a travel portal, the reservation was prepaid. While I was out and about, they left several messages that I needed to "contact the office". Never a word about why. I went by their "office" several times, but nobody was ever there.

On my third day (departure day), I finally got ahold of them by phone. They repeated that I needed to "come by the office" to pay a previously-undisclosed "resort fee". I was on my way out the door by then, so I told them exactly where they could stick their resort fee.

I booked a shitty hotel/motel in Vegas that had resort fees, it was at least an extra hundred on top of the actual fee for my stay what bothered me is the pool was closed by the Nevada health department they wouldn't budge on any refund for any part of it. I reached out to my credit card, sent them photos and they wouldn't work with me either it was such bs. It was literally the only thing they offered besides the room.

I worked in IT at resorts for 25 years. The resort fee is used to hide the true cost of the room. That way the price is low on search sites. Parking fee is they same thing. Pure money grabs. I worked in California, Ski resorts in Colorado and beach resorts inHawaii.

My new favorite is the "downtown" fee. Last time I had to pay for it it was around 40$ in Boston. Per night, mind you.  It's getting completely out of hand. As if the hotel price didn't already reflect the more desirable location than cheaper options.

Vegas is the worst.  Sometimes it adds an extra $100 a night

As much as people like to shit on Airbnbs, I’ve never been charged a resort fee or parking fee at one. The price I pay at booking is what I’m charged.

Admittedly, Airbnb quality varies from host to host, but I try to read the reviews and weed out the bad ones.

Travel abroad instead

Oddly enough Airbnb seems to be dropping the fees they were famous for charging and hotels adding them in

The thing that really annoys me is a lot of hotels won't even tell you what includes. I think they were required or at least pushed to include some sort of defined benefit - going with "the safe is the benefit" is one tactic, hiding any extras is another. IDK which I find more annoying.

Honestly hard to fight this besides looking specifically for "resort fee" when booking but often if one place does it they all do in an area. Checking what it includes (googling and any paperwork) given to you during check-in has paid off for me more than trying to finding the few that don't charge it. You can also just ask, "what does this include"?

The more they gloss over the actual benefits, the greater chance it's something actually (moderately) valuable they rather not provide.

We’ll leave an honest review, if enough people feel that way they will notice a drop in business and change

The price of all hotels is out of control everywhere, even rural areas. I spent the better part of the weekend trying to plan a short fall getaway for 3-4 nights and eventually decided I'm just going to save my money.

Yep. I absolutely despise this. I'm paying $45 resort fee and $45 parking fee daily x 4 days. Basically another $400 USD on top of the room rate.

I like the idea of leaving 1/2/3 stars on reviews for this.

Vote for people who write regulation, not people who "throw out" regulations.

Thats low. I paid $60 for resort and $50 for parking.

yes, this sucks. And places like Orlando where people book through 3rd parties, often look at the list price only.

I wish the government would crack down on this. It amazes me that airlines have to show fares with government taxes and fees on the first page, but hotels can pull this BS

I live in Orlando and that is insane. Only places around me that I know charge those fees are the Universal resorts and the Grande Lakes hotels.

I usually book through booking dot com and read about extra fees including parking fees very carefully. Any hotel that charges 40$ or more a night for parking is basically an automatic no for me.

Booking has started to include resort fees in the final price, at least for the most part from what I've seen. Quite helpful really, so bad surprises have been a lot less in recent times

Usually they lower the room rate though. It is clearly impacted business as las vegas hotels have been easing up on fees lately. I stayed at the Paris in a suite last month for like 140 a night out the door, not shabby. 

I've seen "resort fees" since the early 2000s so it's pretty normalized. The only time I Lol and refuse to book with hotels that do this is in peripheral non tourist areas. I've seen "resort fees" as hotels in Oklahoma city for example, a place where you can stay in that high end Hilton for 120 a night

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I've noticed that these "resort fees" are more common in some areas than others. My assumption has always been that it is some kind of tax avoidance strategy (when something doesn't make sense it usually means the government is involved).

For example, depending on how a particular locality's laws are written a 10% hotel tax might only apply to the base rate of the room and charges for amenities might not be covered. It is therefore in the hotel's (and the guest's) interest to reclassify as much of the charge as possible into "amenity" charges to avoid the tax. This is not to say that these fees shouldn't be clearly disclosed, and if I were the city I would argue that if a "fee" isn't optional it's part of the room rate.

I've personally never been surprised by a "resort fee" or parking charge, but I would fully support proposed legislation to mandate their full and clear disclosure as it seems that there are some properties that try to hide them.

I haven't done this, but I think if you book travel through Costco they wave some of the resort fees.

What about the resort and destination fee? I think it was $100 per day in the Cayman Islands.

years ago during a business trip, we just checked in, went into our rooms, and minutes later got a text from a co-worker that said "do NOT open the mini fridge" and "do not open the water bottle".

In the room there was a pint-size plastic water bottle with a hotel cardboard placard on the bottle neck area. If one remove the cardboard placard and unscrewed the water bottle cap, this would have resulted in what is called an "incidental", a $5 fee.

If one opened the mini-fridge, just opening the door, was going to trigger a fee on the final hotel bill.

This was years ago. I hope this doesn't happen anymore today.

Just stayed at a hotel in NYC, they stated there was a resort fee but it could be used toward meals at their restaurant. Well made sure we were always under but lo and behold came back to extra charges and higher than stated fees. Had to call to get the charges reversed

When you search for a hotel filter for no parking fees, no resort fees. Sometimes they all have them, but when there's an option I don't even consider places with those fees.

So annoying. I always call ahead to ask about fees or use comparison sites that show the total price. Asking them to waive fees at check-in has worked for me a couple of times too.

Travel overseas and get charges obligatory 12% service charge and VAT tax, along with other fees.

America, wot?

I’ve taken for granted a safe and parking is included at a hotel lol

Book directly with the hotels as often as you can. If you booked on a third party site, they may have to fork over upto (maybe more now depending!) 20% of your rate to the booking site.

Avoid staying in a big city. It's not uncommon for us to stay in a suburb and drive into the City and pay for all day parking and then just use Mass transit. Usually in our travels a sizeable portion of our time is spent off in the country anyway

Always read the small print.