How to anticipate the hidden costs that your hotel will charge you?

Far too many customers have the bad surprise when they arrive at their hotel to learn that “compulsory fees” often called ” resort fees ” not mentioned when booking would be vaccinated. If this practice begins to be framed and if it is often too late to go back once you are there, there is a way to anticipate the thing.

What are resort fees or hotel fees?

As we have already explained, resort fees or hotel fees are supplements, often compulsory, that some hotels charge you in return for services that are generally free elsewhere, regardless of whether you use them or not.

For example, you find it normal to enjoy the swimming pool of your hotel for free, but if you are in a hotel complex in the Caribbean, you will be charged for using it or benefiting from a deckchair or putting your towel on the beach.

With the COVID crisis hotels have become more and more innovative in the unbundling (transforming free services into mandatory paid supplements) and if they are more and more obliged to inform the customer at the time of reservation , this does not change the existence of this detestable practice. Some are even starting to charge for cleaning elsewhere.

We are preparing for you soon a list of the most eccentric fees that you can be charged, but our purpose here is to be able to identify them and know what to expect before booking.

Resort Fee Checker

Resort Fee Checker is a tool that allows you to find out about a hotel’s policy in terms of resort and hotel fees.

These costs being by definition “hidden” I think that we should not expect 100% relevance but it is always useful to have an order of magnitude and realize that a hotel a priori cheap to book is much less in fact.

You can search by hotel, for example the JW Marriott Cancun that we tried recently.

You will therefore learn that you will be billed in a mandatory manner $33.32 per night and per room to access the swimming pool, the gym and to have access to Internal. Optional breakfast will be $28 per person.

You can also search by city. For example Cancun , which is a typical destination where hotels massively apply resort fees:

For your information, we remind you that even if you pay for your stay using points from a loyalty program, these supplements will always have to be paid in addition.

Conclusion

It is not possible today to pass between the drops of the resort fees when they are practiced. But you can at least prepare for it to better estimate the real budget of your vacation and, perhaps, choose a hotel where the pain is less heavy.

Photo: Resort fees from Rawpixel.com via Shutterstock

Bertrand Duperrin
Bertrand Duperrinhttp://www.duperrin.com
Compulsive traveler, present in the French #avgeek community since the late 2000s and passionate about (long) travel since his youth, Bertrand Duperrin co-founded Travel Guys with Olivier Delestre in March 2015.
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