Resort Fees Explained and How to Avoid Paying Them (October 2026)

A resort fee is a mandatory charge a hotel adds on top of the advertised room rate, usually covering bundled things like wifi, gym and pool access, parking or a small food and beverage credit. You pay it whether or not you touch a single one of those amenities.

Most guests meet resort fees at resorts in Las Vegas, Orlando, Hawaii, the Caribbean and ski towns, and most of them find out the size of the charge in the last click before they pay. The good news is that resort fees explained properly come down to three moves: find the number before you commit, ask the property to reduce or remove it, and be ready to change the property or the channel when the answer is no. Last reviewed October 2026.

One correction first, because it is repeated all over the internet and it is wrong: the Federal Trade Commission did not ban resort fees. What changed is that they now have to be shown up front.

What Are Resort Fees?

The arrangement works like this. A hotel advertises a low nightly room rate, then adds a mandatory per-night charge at the booking engine’s final step, after you have picked a room, entered dates and often entered a card number. The fee is a condition of the rate you accepted, it usually cannot be removed once that rate is booked, and it typically does not respond to discounts.

That last part trips people up. AAA, senior, corporate and travel-agent discounts reduce the room rate but leave the resort fee untouched, because the fee is billed separately from the rate. Travelers United puts it plainly: the fee is non-discounted and non-commissionable, so a percentage-off code changes nothing about it.

Is a resort fee mandatory once you book?

For the rate you booked, yes. Once a fee is attached to a rate, the property treats it as part of what you agreed to pay, and declining at the front desk is not a practical route out. The real options are to change the property, the channel or the dates before you commit, which is why the checking step below matters more than the argument at check-in.

Common Resort Fees Explained

There is no standard list. Each property defines its own bundle, and the same charge goes by several names depending on the brand. Here is what guests most often run into.

Destination fee

A flat nightly amount tied to the location rather than to anything you use. It is the most common label, and on properties that use it the resort fee, destination fee and facility fee are frequently the same charge wearing a different name. A TripAdvisor Las Vegas forum thread documents one property listing a 37-a-night fee plus estimated tax at checkout, which is the pattern most guests recognise.

Facility or amenity fee

The same money under a different label. Facilities such as a business centre, a fitness room, a spa or a kids club get folded into one bundled amount, and guests receive it whether they use any of it. Lifehacker documented a Las Vegas property charging 44.22 a night in a fee that covered, among other things, phone access and a fitness centre, plus another Florida property whose 100-a-night fee included use of a fax machine.

Service charges

A percentage or flat fee added for service rather than amenities. In some countries this is a house convention applied across hospitality; in the United States it shows up most often on resort restaurants, spa bookings and event spaces. Ask whether it is already included, because double-counting a service charge inside a resort fee is a common billing error.

Parking and valet

Self-parking and valet are usually billed separately from the resort fee, though some properties include a self-parking allowance and charge only for valet. A former revenue-management employee working in a large Las Vegas hotel and casino group described the local norm to r/vegas as roughly 45 to 50 a night across almost the whole market, with few upscale properties exempt. Read the parking line separately from the fee line either way.

Food and beverage credit

A small per-night credit toward food, drinks or in-room items. This is the part of the bundle most guests notice, and also the part most likely to be worth something to you. Whether it applies to room service, the minibar or only one restaurant changes the value completely, so read the terms before valuing it.

Miscellaneous inclusions and incidentals

Everything else lands here: local and toll-free calling, boarding pass printing, luggage storage, welcome cocktails, bottled water, early check-in and late check-out. The list reads better than it feels. A credit you have to be at the pool bar during specific hours to use is not the same as a credit you can spend on dinner.

Resort Fees vs Taxes and Optional Charges

Most confusion comes from lumping every extra line into one bucket. A resort fee is a hotel charge you may sometimes negotiate. A resort or occupancy tax is a government tax you can never negotiate. Knowing which is which stops a lot of wasted arguing at the desk.

Charge	Who sets it	Can it be removed	Typical size
Resort fee	The hotel	Sometimes, if you ask early	Flat amount per night, per room
Destination or facility fee	The hotel	Usually the same charge renamed	Flat amount per night, per room
Service charge	The hotel	Only if it was billed in error	Flat or a percentage per visit
Resort or occupancy tax	Local or state government	No	Percentage of the taxable room rate
Parking or valet	The hotel or its operator	Only by not parking	Per night or per day, self or valet
Optional fee package	The hotel	Yes, because you chose it	Flat amount per night, per person
Third-party booking fee	The booking site	Only by booking direct	Small flat fee or a higher rate
Incidentals hold	The hotel	Released after checkout	A temporary hold on your card
Tipping	You	Entirely up to you	Customary amounts, often posted on the folio

One line on that table deserves emphasis. An incidental hold is not a fee. It is a temporary authorisation on your card to cover anything you might charge to the room, and it is released after checkout once the folio closes.

How to Check for Fees Before You Book

Checking takes about three minutes if you know where to look. The total that matters is the one on the final checkout screen, not the nightly rate in the search results.

1. Work the search all the way to checkout. A nightly rate in a search result is a headline. Complete the booking flow in a new tab and read the full total before you enter payment details.
2. Read the price breakdown line by line. Look for a separate mandatory charge, and check whether taxes and any destination or facility fee are already inside the displayed total or stacked on top of it.
3. Look up the property on a fee-lookup tool. ResortFeeChecker.com tracks nightly resort fees across thousands of properties, which gives you a figure to compare against what the booking engine shows you.
4. Check the cancellation and prepayment terms. A prepaid rate is non-refundable, so once a fee is locked in on a prepaid booking you have very little room to argue about it later.
5. Ask the property directly for the total. A short email asking for the inclusive nightly cost plus all mandatory charges gets a documented answer you can hold the booking to.

What booking channel does to the fee

Channel choice changes your exposure more than most guests realise. Booking direct with the brand gives you the loyalty relationship, which is the single best shot at a waiver. Booking through an online travel agency often adds a third-party fee and can forfeit a waiver the same room would have earned direct. Wholesale and tour-operator bookings tend to bundle differently and are harder to unpick. Points bookings vary by programme, and the rule is usually that the waiver requires booking the brand directly. If fee exposure is the deciding factor for you, compare the same room across at least two channels on a checkout total, not a nightly rate.

Prepaid packages are the trap

Package and honeymoon bookings get the biggest surprise, because the resort fee is typically not bundled into what you already paid. You have handed over money weeks in advance, the trip is paid for in full, and the fee arrives at checkout as a fresh addition. Travelers United flags this as the group that gets hit hardest, and it is worth checking explicitly whether a package price is inclusive of the fee before you pay the deposit.

How to Ask the Hotel to Reduce or Remove a Resort Fee

Staff are trained not to volunteer a waiver, so the request has to come from you. Timing matters more than tone: the further left the conversation happens, the better your odds.

1. At the booking desk. Before you confirm, ask for the rate with all mandatory charges included. Framing the question as a different rate rather than a fee removal works better than asking for a discount.
2. Before you arrive. Email or call the property and ask about eligibility for a waiver under your loyalty membership, your package, or a repeat-guest rate. Having the answer in writing before arrival is worth a lot.
3. At the front desk, on arrival. A widely shared line from an industry worker with 25 years in the business is worth using nearly word for word: “Before I check in, can you confirm what that resort fee covers — I want to make sure I’m using everything it includes.” It signals the fee is negotiable and puts the desk on record without demanding a waiver outright.
4. At the casino host, in Las Vegas. Hosts can often waive the fee in exchange for expected play. Ask directly what play level earns a waiver. In a r/vegas thread, a former revenue manager confirmed the fees are near-universal on the Strip, which means the host conversation, not the front desk, is the lever that moves.
5. At checkout, if the fee was hidden. Ask for a full itemised breakdown of every charge on the folio, and ask which mandatory charges were disclosed in the advertised price and which were added later. If a fee was not disclosed up front, that is a disclosure problem, which is where the next section comes in.
6. Through your loyalty service line. Ask whether the rate you booked qualifies for a fee waiver, and whether the answer changes if you rebook direct. r/awardtravel users report the same pattern: the waiver generally requires booking the brand directly, and a portal booking can forfeit it.

What to say when the fee cannot go

Ask what the fee is made of and get the property to explain the inclusions. If the answer is that it cannot be waived, ask for the total you are actually committing to and confirm the rate, dates and inclusions in writing. Once you have that, the decision belongs to you rather than to the front desk.

Loyalty and points bookings

Several large programmes waive fees on award bookings, and coverage reported in 2026 names Hilton Honors and World of Hyatt among the chains doing so. MGM Rewards waivers generally require a direct booking. The pattern is consistent enough to plan around: if avoiding the fee matters, book the award stay through the brand’s own channel and check the programme’s current terms, because eligibility rules change.

When You Cannot Avoid Paying Resort Fees

Some fees are genuinely non-negotiable, and pretending otherwise wastes a holiday’s worth of goodwill. It is non-negotiable when the property has no waiver policy at all, when the rate is prepaid and non-refundable, when you arrived without asking, or when the fee is a government tax wearing a similar name.

When that happens, the response is arithmetic rather than argument. Take the nightly fee, multiply by your nights, and add it to the advertised rate before you compare properties. A fee in the 45-to-50 range across a week of nights is a mid-hundreds addition per booking, and on a family trip where each room carries the charge it multiplies again. Once it is in your total, the comparison is honest.

Then change one variable rather than all of them. A different room type at the same property may not carry the fee. A property a mile or two off the main drag often has none at all. Booking direct instead of through an agency might pick up a waiver. Travelling in the shoulder season sometimes reaches a property that has quietly dropped the fee for a quieter stretch, which is a real tactic in destinations with strong seasonality. A vacation rental in the same area has no such fee by definition, which is the cleanest escape and also the one that changes what your trip looks like.

As for a no-fee property in Las Vegas, the answer to the question people actually ask is that some exist, and verification is the whole job. Search with the fee filter in the booking engine, check the checkout total, and confirm with the property before booking rather than trusting the word “unrestricted” in a headline. Rates change, so treat any figure you find, including one on a lookup site, as dated information to confirm.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Three things to do before you pay for anything. Check the full total at the last step of the booking flow, not the nightly rate in the results. Ask the property for a fee schedule in writing so you know what you are paying for. And if a mandatory charge was not part of the advertised price, say so in writing to the property and report it to the Federal Trade Commission, because a disclosure failure is the one part of this whole topic the current rules do address.