What is a resort fee, and why is it not in the price?

A resort fee is a fixed amount per night that a hotel adds to your bill whether or not you use anything it is said to pay for. It is not a tip, not a deposit and not a choice. If the hotel charges one, every room pays it.

Hotels state it per room and per night, not per person, so a three-night stay pays it three times. The hotel sets the amount, so two hotels on the same street can charge different amounts, and one of them can charge nothing.

The reason it exists is the reason it is not in the price. A hotel that moves part of its room rate into a “fee” can advertise a lower rate than a competitor that did not, while collecting the same money. A list sorted by the advertised rate puts that hotel first. That is the whole mechanism.

The name comes from resort hotels. Hotels with no pool and no beach charge the same kind of fee under other names: destination fee, facility fee, amenity fee. The names guide goes through them.

Collection is the part that catches people. A booking site charges your card for the room. Where the hotel collects the resort fee itself, it is not in that charge: the hotel takes it at check-in or check-out, so one stay produces two charges from two companies, and the second is the one nobody quoted you.

It can be taxed as well. Of the 431 hotels in our checks that state a fee (through 20 September 2026), 320 say tax is added on top of it. In Las Vegas, SAHARA Las Vegas states the tax on its fee as 13.38%. Tax is not a hidden charge: it is a government charge outside the headline rate, and we keep it apart from the fee.

Hotels list what the fee buys, on their own websites and in their own words. Of the 366 hotels in our checks that list what their fee covers (through 20 September 2026), 298 mention internet or wi-fi, 210 a fitness center or gym, 140 phone calls, 139 coffee and 133 bottled water, counting each hotel once per kind of item.

Whether those are worth the money is not the question. You pay whether you use them or not, and a charge you cannot refuse is part of the price.

The Federal Trade Commission’s rule on unfair or deceptive fees (16 CFR Part 464) came into force on 12 May 2025. Anyone advertising a hotel price must show the total, including every mandatory fee. A mandatory resort fee belongs in the first number you see, not in a footnote under it.

It does not cap or ban the fee: a hotel may charge what it likes, as long as the charge is in the displayed total. It also lets government taxes be shown separately, so a price that complies with the rule can still be lower than what you pay, by the tax.

The rule governs what sellers display. It does not reach the rate data booking sites buy, and why the same room shows two prices is what we measured there.

From 21 February 2026, any hotel or online booking service that advertises prices to New Yorkers must include every mandatory fee in the advertised price. It turns on who the price is advertised to, not on where the hotel is.

The hotel’s own website is the source, usually on a page about mandatory fees or in the small print under the rate. It states the fee, whether tax is added and what it covers.

Our city pages list what each hotel states on its own site, with the link and the date we read it, and the resort fee calculator totals a fee for your stay. A hotel we could not confirm is listed as not confirmed, never as free.

Take Las Vegas. Of the 40 Las Vegas hotels we checked against their own websites (through 17 September 2026), 28 state a mandatory fee, 1 states that it charges none, and 11 are not confirmed on the hotel’s site either way. The median stated fee is $49.98 a night before tax, and stated fees run from $10.00 to $55.00.

We show the fee on the search result, count it in the total and rank hotels by that total, so moving part of the price into a fee gains a hotel nothing in our order. When a rate plan leaves out a fee that the hotel’s other rate plans itemise, we count it anyway and mark it as inferred, because the hotel charges the fee whichever plan sold the room.

What we charge your card is the room; the fee stays with the hotel, and the result says which part is which. How we check a fee sets out the rules, and the Las Vegas guide applies them hotel by hotel.