When it comes to new fees, the sky's the limit. Liz Pollock recently checked out of the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Golf Resort Palm Springs in Cathedral City, Calif., and discovered a mysterious fee on her hotel bill: a "top-floor" surcharge of $7 per night.
A "top-floor" charge? Why not? To squeeze a little more revenue from their guests, travel companies are getting creative.
The only way to fight back is to become just as creative about fighting them.
"Hidden fees are taking advantage of consumers across the country," says Bret Bonnet, co-founder of People for Honest Pricing, an organization that lobbies for fair pricing and certifies businesses that practice honest pricing. "While they're definitely not a new phenomenon, they seem to be getting worse."
For Pollock, who was in Cathedral City for just a few days, the "top-floor" fee was particularly annoying.
The DoubleTree had already billed her a mandatory $25-per-night resort fee, which covered on-site self-parking and internet "even though Hilton Honors members are supposed to receive free internet if they book through Hilton." But it really topped itself with the top-floor charge. Hilton hadn't warned her about the fee before the reservation and didn't inform her about it until long after she'd left the property.
That's not how it's supposed to work, says Robert Hatfield, the hotel's director of sales.
"A guest will receive a prearrival email with the upgrade options available to them and what the additional charge for those items are," he says. "Once the guest chooses the upgrade option, the resort is notified.
Once we make the upgrades, the guest is then notified via email. This all happens before arrival."
Pollock solved the mystery when she asked her husband about the charge.
"Apparently, sometime after the reservation was made back in October, he went on the Hilton website and noticed there was an 'upgrade' option at the bottom of the page.
He clicked 'yes' to upgrade to the fourth floor," she says, without noticing that he would incur an additional charge. "He's a huge golfer and wanted as big a view of the golf course as he could get."
Sometimes, old fees hide under new names. For example, the $20-a-day resort fee is called a "guest amenity fee" at Le Méridien Delfina Santa Monica. In San Francisco, you're more likely to find an "urban fee" or "facility fee" on your bill. It's all the same thing -- they just don't use the "R" word.
Not to be outdone, Dallas-based American Airlines and United Airlines last year quietly implemented "gate handling" and "gate service" fees of $25 to check your bag when you board if there's no room on the plane for your carry-on and you're flying on a "basic" economy class ticket. They wouldn't want to call these luggage fees, since passengers will do almost anything to avoid those.
Michael McCall, a professor of hospitality business at Michigan State University, says travelers knew about the old fees, thanks to press accounts and word of mouth. The workaround: rename them.
"The concept often works," he says.
If you're on a cruise, look out for one of the newest "gotchas": If one person buys an alcohol package, the cruise line requires every adult in the same cabin to buy one. For example, Royal Caribbean's "deluxe drink package" lets you choose between unlimited cocktails, beer, wine, nonalcoholic beverages, premium coffee, tea and bottled water, for a flat fee of $55 per person, per day. "So if a husband wants to get a package because he likes to have drinks on the ship and a wife doesn't want a drop of alcohol, too bad," says Tanner Callais, founder of the cruise site Cruzely.com.
To avoid fees, read the fine print on every purchase. Question any fees you don't recognize and take aggressive measures to remove them from your bill.