Resort Fee
Also known as: resort fees, destination fee, amenity fee, hotel facility fee
A mandatory daily charge added by some US hotels, ostensibly for amenities like Wi-Fi, gym access, and pool use. Pre-2025 average was $33 per night, with Las Vegas hotels at $44-57 per night. The FTC Junk Fees Rule (May 2025) now requires these to be disclosed upfront.
A resort fee is a mandatory daily charge added by some US hotels on top of the advertised room rate. Hotels justify the fee as covering bundled amenities — Wi-Fi access, gym entry, pool use, local phone calls, in-room coffee, newspaper delivery — that historically were free at full-service properties. In practice, the fee applies whether or not the guest uses the amenities, and the listed inclusions often duplicate things that are already free or were not requested.
Resort fees were originally a Las Vegas phenomenon in the early 2010s and spread to major US tourism destinations through the 2020s. **Consumer Reports’ 2025 analysis** found the average resort fee was approximately $33 per night, with Las Vegas properties charging $44-57 per night — a 12-19% effective surcharge on a $300 room. Before the FTC Junk Fees Rule, hotels routinely advertised the base room rate without the resort fee, then disclosed it only at the final checkout screen or even at the desk during check-in.
The **FTC Junk Fees Rule (May 2025)** changed the disclosure rule. Hotels and the booking platforms that sell their rooms must now show the total including any mandatory resort fee in the advertised price — not as a surprise add-on. Penalties for non-compliance reach $51,744 per violation. Most major US OTAs (Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Marriott.com, Hilton.com) updated their pricing displays by mid-2025 to comply.
Resort fees themselves remain legal — what changed is the requirement to disclose them upfront. Travellers can still avoid them in some cases: book through chains that have eliminated resort fees entirely (Hilton has phased them out at most US properties), use loyalty redemptions where the property waives the fee for points stays, or stay at hotels in destinations that have not adopted the resort-fee model.