What a Resort Fee Actually Is
A resort fee, also called a “destination fee” or “amenity fee,” is a mandatory daily charge that hotels add on top of the advertised room rate. It is not optional. You cannot decline it. It is charged whether you use the included amenities or not.
Hotels use labels like “destination fee,” “facility charge,” “urban amenity fee,” or “experience fee” to describe the same thing: a mandatory nightly charge on top of the room rate. The label shifts constantly, but the impact on your wallet stays exactly the same.
The practice started in the early 2000s at a handful of resort properties in Hawaii and Las Vegas. It has since spread to urban hotels, airport hotels, and properties that are decidedly not “resorts” in any traditional sense.
How Much Are We Actually Talking About?
A NerdWallet analysis of more than 400 hotels found an average resort fee of $35 per night in 2024. At popular destinations like Las Vegas and Hawaii, fees of $40 to $55 per night are common. That may not sound catastrophic, until you do the math across a week-long trip.
On a five-night stay, a $45 resort fee adds $225 to your total. A room that seems to cost $150 a night can easily end up being $200 or more when you add on resort fees, parking, and service charges.
The average resort fee in the U.S. is about $42 per night, though luxury properties in Las Vegas, Miami, and New York regularly charge $50 to $55 or more. The numbers have been climbing steadily, not shrinking.
Las Vegas: The Resort Fee Capital of America
The average resort fee across Las Vegas hotels is now roughly $42 per hotel per night. The average resort fee amount in the prior year was $39.90, representing about a six percent increase. That upward trajectory has held consistent for several years running.
Several luxury properties now charge $55 per night before tax, including ARIA, Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Wynn, Encore, Venetian, Palazzo, Fontainebleau, and Waldorf Astoria. With tax, that amounts to roughly $62 per night.
As of late 2025, most Strip hotels charge between $35 and $55 per night, plus tax. That means a three-night stay can quietly add $120 to $180 to your bill. For a city that built its reputation on affordable rooms and entertainment value, the math has become harder to justify.
Why Hotels Kept These Fees Separate
Hotels have long used resort fees to keep advertised room rates lower in search results, according to travel industry experts. A hotel showing a $99 base rate ranks better in an online search than one showing $149, even if the total cost ends up identical after the fee is applied.
Hotels have to pay travel websites a commission on the base room rate, but they generally do not pay a commission on the resort fees. Because of this, hotels vastly prefer that you pay the fee directly to them at the front desk. This dynamic is exactly why many booking sites might show you a cheaper upfront rate when you hit search, but later tack on a disclaimer stating that a mandatory fee is due at the property.
Resort fees are mandatory charges that apply to all guests regardless of whether you use the included amenities. They are disclosed in the booking terms and conditions, even when they are not prominently displayed in the advertised rate. So technically, the hotels can argue they told you. Just not loudly.
The Scale of the Problem
A Consumer Reports nationally representative survey of more than 2,000 adults found that roughly one in three had been charged a hidden hotel fee in the past two years. That is an enormous number of travelers caught off guard at the checkout desk.
The hotel industry collected more than $2.9 billion in resort fees and other fees and surcharges in 2018, according to Consumer Reports. Given the subsequent years of fee increases, the current figure is almost certainly higher.
The FTC launched rulemaking in 2022 by requesting public input on whether a rule could help eliminate unfair and deceptive pricing tactics. After receiving more than 12,000 comments on how hidden and misleading fees affected personal spending and competition, the FTC announced a proposed rule in October 2023 and invited a second round of comments. The Commission received more than 60,000 additional comments, which it considered in developing the final rule.
The FTC Finally Stepped In
The Federal Trade Commission announced a bipartisan rule to ban hidden hotel fees on December 17, 2024. The law went into effect in May 2025. It was a moment that consumer advocates had been pushing toward for well over a decade.
Effective May 12, 2025, the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to obscure and misrepresent total prices and fees for live-event tickets and short-term lodging.
The core prohibition is straightforward: any business that shows a price for a hotel room must display the total price, and that total price must appear more prominently than any other pricing information. The rule requires hotels to display the total price, including resort fees, upfront. You will still pay them. You will just know about them sooner.
What the Rule Does and Doesn’t Do
Resort fees are currently legal in the United States and most other countries. However, the FTC finalized a rule in December 2024 that requires hotels to include all mandatory fees in their advertised price, which takes effect in 2025. Once enforced, hotels can still charge resort fees, but they cannot hide them from the upfront price.
While this change is meant to make pricing more transparent, allowing travelers to better understand the real cost, it remains to be seen if this will actually lower prices overall. Hotels could simply adjust their base rates to account for these incorporated fees. Transparency, in other words, is not the same as affordability.
According to the FTC’s analysis, the new rule will save American consumers up to 53 million hours annually previously spent searching for hotels’ actual total prices, time valued at more than $11 billion over the next decade. That is a meaningful shift, even if it stops short of eliminating the fees themselves.
State-Level Protections Going Even Further
California’s SB 478, which took effect July 1, 2024, requires all businesses to include mandatory fees in advertised prices, with no exceptions. California moved faster than the federal government on this issue, and its law covers a broader range of industries than the FTC rule does.
Minnesota passed similar legislation set to take effect in 2025, while Massachusetts, Colorado, and Virginia have their own variations. The patchwork of state-level rules means that your protections as a traveler can vary considerably depending on which state you are booking in.
Early cases filed in 2025 have invoked the FTC rule to support claims that hidden fees violate state unfair-business-practices laws. In states like California, consumers can seek actual damages or a statutory minimum per violation in class actions, plus restitution and attorney’s fees. The combination of federal enforcement, state attorney general actions, and private lawsuits creates overlapping accountability that makes hidden fees increasingly expensive to maintain.
How Fees Vary Across Hotel Chains
Data compiled by NerdWallet showed that the average resort fee when present was $50 at Marriott, $33.80 at Hyatt, $33 at Hilton, $32.57 at IHG, and $25 at Wyndham. The gap between brands is wider than most travelers realize, and it matters when you are planning a longer stay.
Some hotel chains such as Hilton Honors and World of Hyatt waive the resort fees on bookings made with points. Top-tier hotel elite status can eliminate resort fees entirely. Hyatt waives charges on both paid and award stays for its highest-level Globalist members.
Not all hotel chains handle resort fees the same way. Some waive them for loyalty members. Others charge them even on points stays. Checking the specific policy before you book a points redemption can save a meaningful amount of money.
Practical Ways to Reduce or Avoid Resort Fees
Start by comparing the all-in price across several hotels. A room with a higher base rate but no mandatory fee may cost less than a cheaper room with a daily resort fee. The advertised rate is almost never the full story, so treat it as a starting point rather than a final number.
You can sometimes negotiate the fee at check-in, especially during low-occupancy periods when the hotel has bargaining incentive to keep you happy. It doesn’t always work, but it costs nothing to ask politely, and quieter travel seasons give you more leverage than peak holiday weekends.
To judge whether a fee represents any real value, list the services you will actually use and estimate what they would cost separately. A family using the pool, shuttle, and beach gear may get more value than a business traveler who only sleeps there. Context matters more than the dollar amount in isolation.
The Takeaway
Resort fees are not going away. The regulatory momentum of 2024 and 2025 has made them more visible, but it hasn’t made them disappear. Resort fees are not going away despite a new FTC rule that now requires hotels to show full prices upfront. The landscape has shifted toward transparency, which is a genuine improvement, even if it falls short of what frustrated travelers actually want.
The most useful shift for travelers is learning to stop comparing base rates and start comparing total costs. A hotel that shows you the full price upfront, fees included, is giving you something genuinely valuable: an honest starting point for your travel budget.
Traveling mindfully means knowing what you are agreeing to before you arrive. The resort fee era isn’t over, but at least now it’s harder for the industry to keep it quietly out of sight until the moment you hand over your card at checkout.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.