Hidden Fees Hotels Charge You and You Don’t Even Realize

Staying in a luxury hotel while on a family trip may feel like an unnecessary expense. However, the extra amenities may make the price well worth it! The Biden Administration announced that it would move to start limiting and striking down junk fees in several sectors, including banks, hotels, and airlines. This government would likely enact this policy through the Federal Trade Commission. However, the response from companies has been more or less what anyone could have expected from entities of that nature: doubling down and finding loopholes. Here are some hidden fees your hotel might charge you that you didn’t even know about.

To find the information on this list, we looked through different accounts of real people who analyzed the bills they got from their hotels and found sneaky fees and surcharges that weren't disclosed when they booked. We also looked at the regulatory information regarding the charging of these fees to see whether they were truly legal as many consumers have been taking various entities, hotels included, to court to have these charges dismissed under new laws. Thus, we also looked at various legal cases to see what charges consumers are bringing to trial.

The destination or resort fee is one of the most common hidden fees in the hotel world. It's a nebulous fee that covers various "amenities" that the hotel provides, such as "free" Wi-Fi. However, this fee isn't optional based on what you use and the hotel typically won't disclose it unless forced. Destination and resort fees have gotten more pricey over the years, with some hotels charging guests upwards of $30 per night, per room. In some cases, the hotels are pretty upfront about their additional charge, letting guests know that they'll be offered "exclusive amenities" for the charge. This would actually be an okay deal if it were an optional add-on that guests could purchase, but it's typically a mandatory charge that all guests must pay for, regardless of which amenities they use.

Some states, such as California, have instituted policies and regulations that mandate that hotels must compensate housekeeping employees if they are tasked with cleaning more than a certain square footage during an eight-hour shift. Of course, the hotels would never just pay their employees what they’re worth. So, they started tacking on hidden fees to compensate for the additional money they had to pay their employees instead of hiring more employees to reduce the square footage assigned to each housekeeper or just eating the cost because compensating your employees fairly is the right thing to do. In some cases, they didn’t even try to hide what they were doing as some consumers have taken Mariott to court over their “Hotel Worker Protection Ordinance Costs Surcharge.”

Some hotels claim to offer free internet for guests to use. However, these services are rarely actually free. Most of the time, the hotel funds these services with the hidden fee that it charges all patrons for internet use, regardless of whether or not they use those services. They know very well that if they only charged people who use the service, they would have to charge more and those people might instead opt not to purchase internet from them and utilize roaming charges on their phone or other methods of obtaining internet access.

One way that hotels get around the new rules regarding hidden fees on their bills is to disguise their fees as taxes. While a hotel's fees are entirely within their rights to choose to enforce or not, a tax is a lawful requirement; it's out of their hands. Thus, by repackaging their fees as "taxes," hotels can pretend that they have no choice but to charge the consumer for the optional amount. This isn't a special type of fee, but rather a tactic to prevent consumers from pursuing their charges in court. By pretending it's obligatory by law, they fleece a lot of consumers who don't know their rights and obligations for an optional charge.

Since junk fees are now under fire from the government, the hotel industry is scrambling to make their fees look legitimate. In some cases, your hotel might try to charge you for using their linens, whether that be towels or bedsheets. These fees are just the resort fee that the hotel repackages into a more legitimate-looking fee for a service that many consumers have no choice but to use. After all, who brings their own bedsheets to a hotel, right? Even people who bring their own towels have to pay the towel fee if one is present on the bill. Some hotels may even attempt to tack a towel or bedsheet fee on top of other hidden fees to further jack up the per-night price.

Those who use hotel landlines might find themselves paying for the privilege at certain locations. While many expect the use of the hotel's landline, at least for domestic calls, to be complimentary, some hotels are now charging a fee to all consumers that "covers" the cost of operating the landline. This fee is another one that would be a good deal if one could opt out of it for those who don't use the service, but it's typically a mandatory fee and the hotel might roll it into the mandatory "destination" fee, depending on where one is staying. Phones are certainly not cheap to operate. So, we do understand the need to cover the cost of providing in and outbound telephone service to rooms. However, companies shouldn't hide this fee from consumers or foist it upon those who don't use the service.

While most people assume that room cleaning is a complimentary fee and a basic part of hotel service, many hotels tack an additional fee on top of the room rate for cleaning. However, hotels both hide this fee from consumers and present it misleadingly. Most of the time, audits have found that these fees do not contribute any more to the maintaining of cleanliness in the suites than the room fee does. While the claim seems to be that these fees go to paying the cleaning staff, rather, these fees line the pockets of the shareholders.

In some cases, such as with the new California ordinance which both forces hotels to pay their cleaning staff based on how much square footage they clean and also prevents them from offering incentives for guests to decline daily room cleaning, hotels are tacking even more fees on that they claim cover those costs. However, audits due to lawsuits have found that these also do not contribute to the maintenance staff's well-being, but, again, are lining the pockets of shareholders.

The Biden Administration officially declared its intent to rid the market of junk fees, particularly those that the company hides from consumers until the time of the bill's deliverance. However, these measures have an uphill battle to fight because a large portion of the legislative branch, which controls whether or not these measures pass into law, actively disdains the idea of being fair to consumers and workers.

Firstly, the FTC has proposed a policy that would ban companies from instituting hidden fees and forcefully obligate them to show the full price of any service or good upfront. This policy would also include a portion that forces companies to list whether a fee is refundable, giving consumers more transparency in what they're paying for. This is the primary service change that would affect the hotel sector but is bundled in with a bunch of other proposed legislations and regulations that would change the way businesses operate about the various fees and additional costs that a company may try to offload onto the consumer.

Additionally, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is working with the White House to create equitable regulation that will curb the use of junk fees and hidden fees to bolster profits. The goal is to do so while maintaining a strong sense of market competition that allows businesses to compete with each other ethically and consumers to choose which businesses they patronize without fear of the business charging them fees they didn't agree to.