Resort Fees Promise Premium Wi-Fi. Here's What You're Actually Paying For

The resort fee is justified by a bundle of amenities. Read the bundle closely and it is mostly things that cost the hotel nothing and you did not ask for.

Read the fine print on a resort fee and you get a list. In-room internet. Fitness centre access. Local calls. Two bottles of water. Notarised documents, occasionally, which is a genuinely surreal thing to find on a bill.

It reads like a bundle. It functions like a price increase you cannot decline.

In 60 seconds

The resort fee is a mandatory daily charge that is not included in the advertised room rate, which is the entire point of it — it keeps the headline number low on comparison sites. The itemised amenities are real but nearly worthless: Wi-Fi costs the hotel almost nothing per guest, the gym is empty most of the day, and the water is water. Judge a property on rate plus fee, never on rate. Our resort fee tracker lists what properties currently charge.

01

Why the fee exists at all

If a property charges $150 and a competitor charges $120 plus a $35 fee, the competitor appears cheaper on every booking site — while collecting more. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the practice spread across the entire industry within a few years of the first operator trying it.

Everything else, including the amenity list, is justification assembled afterwards.

02

The bundle, valued honestly

In-room Wi-FiMarginal cost per guest is close to zero
Fitness centreReal, but most guests never enter it
Local phone callsAn amenity from a world before mobile phones
Two bottles of waterWorth roughly two bottles of water

The Wi-Fi line deserves particular scepticism. "Premium high-speed internet" in resort-fee language frequently means the standard connection, with a higher tier sold separately on the landing page — so the fee buys the baseline and the upsell still exists.

03

The one exception worth knowing

A handful of properties, mostly outside Las Vegas and Atlantic City, charge no resort fee at all and advertise the fact. Encore Boston Harbor is the well-known example.

That is not generosity; it is positioning. In markets where the resort fee is not yet universal, not charging one is a competitive weapon. It also means the comparison is finally honest: the rate you see is the rate you pay.

The fee is not a charge for amenities. It is a charge for appearing cheaper than you are.
04

Where the standard advice is wrong

"Call and ask them to waive the resort fee" circulates constantly. It essentially never works on a cash booking, because the fee is the margin.

What does work is narrower and less satisfying: fees are frequently waived on comped rooms, and tier status with the operator sometimes removes them. That is a real benefit and it is under-publicised — for a frequent visitor to one operator, fee waivers can be worth more annually than the free-play offers people chase harder.

For everyone else, the only reliable move is to stop comparing rates and start comparing totals.

Note. Resort fee amounts and inclusions change frequently and vary by property and rate type. Check the current fee at booking; the mechanics described here are stable, the numbers are not.

Last updated August 23, 2026

Topics

  • resort-fees
  • hotels
  • budget

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