Whine Wednesdays: Excessive Resort Fees In Las Vegas And Other Cities

This weeks edition of Whine Wednesday is looking at a matter that is irking many visitors of hotels: Resort Fees on an excessive scale such as they are being levied in Las Vegas.

I have been spending a couple days in Las Vegas this weekend and while looking into hotel options I realized how unreasonable these pesky resort fees have become.

All the big casino hotels and even some regular hotels such as the Westin Las Vegas (formerly the Westin Casuarina) jumped on the bandwagon and charge resort fees of up to 35$ a day.

In January I wrote about the plan of MGM Hotels & Resorts to charge for parking on top of it all (access my article about that here). Parking is generally free of charge in Las Vegas which I really appreciate. In fact this weekend I was just driving up from Los Angeles so I had the car with me all weekend which made it much easier to change hotels and overall get a few things done while in town.

How much are hotels charging these days?

The SLS Las Vegas, (Starwood Tribute Portfolio) charged 29 USD + Tax, The Mirage (MGM Hotels) a whopping 33,60 USD + Tax and the Aria (MGM Hotels) also 33,60 USD + Tax.

Positive experience is the Elara (Hilton Grand Vacations) that does not charge a resort fee right now.

What irks me the most is that these bogus fees are charged for things that barely anyone uses or that should be included in a hotel operation either way such as local phone calls, use of the fitness center or notary public services.

But what to do? I had a good experience just asking for these resort fees to be taken off, especially if you spend some money on property. If you encounter some problems during your stay the hotel is also very likely to take these fees off your bill. This can amount to substantial savings so it’s always worth it to ask straight out for the removal of such fees.

This also goes for hotels such as in Palm Springs where Resort Fees are also on the rise.

Conclusion

Some hotels have very cheap rates and try to balance their revenue with these resort fees. If you have a hotel such as Luxor or Monte Carlo with a rate of 30$ plus tax and resort fee then fine, that’s somewhat reasonable especially because you can also get Hyatt Gold Passport Credit. For the upscale properties I don’t accept such fees and can’t remember ever having paid them for the past years.