Vegas resort fees on extended stay catch guest by surprise

— -- Question: I'm going to Las Vegas for a 27-night stay. I'm buying a home there and am using that time to make repairs and such. I made a hotel reservation for my trip through Hotwire.

The site doesn't show you the hotel until after you've booked a nonrefundable stay. I don't remember it showing me about the possibility of resort fees. The hotel I got is the Palace Station Courtyard. Its daily resort fee is $14.99!

I already paid about $800 for the hotel, and now with the resort fees tacked on, I'm going to have to pay more than $450 more. You can't get more offensive than this. This is not a good way to welcome visitors and new residents to Las Vegas. You'd think they would be a little more lenient, since I'm staying 27 days. Any help you can give would be very welcome.

—Timothy Williams, Indianapolis

Answer: Resort fees are mandatory charges that hotels levy above and beyond room rates. They cover a variety of services, whether or not you use them - services that travelers don't expect to pay extra for in most destinations, such as the use of pools and fitness centers, in-room internet access and telephone calls. Hotels use these fees to boost revenue without jacking up room rates. In Las Vegas, resort fees have become so pervasive - and so irritating to some guests - that many hotels actually use the lack of them as a marketing tool.

Williams was blindsided by fees that upped the cost of his stay by more than 50%. The Palace Station Courtyard's mandatory $14.99 per-night resort fee covers in-room internet access, unlimited local and long-distance calls, airport and Strip shuttle service, fitness center access and a daily newspaper. Las Vegas hotels charge the 12% hotel tax on resort fees, bringing the total cost even higher.

Resort fees are charged by hotels, not online travel sites like Hotwire. But shouldn't booking sites alert you to the fees up front? They should, and for the most part, they do - but not when you first check out rates.

"Many hotels in and outside of Las Vegas choose to include a mandatory resort fee that is completely separate from their displayed nightly rate," says Hotwire representative Garrett Whittemore.

Compare rates for the Palace Station Courtyard on Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz and you'll see only the nightly rate, before mandatory taxes and fees. You'll find the resort fee listed elsewhere; in some cases the fee is buried in the fine print, nowhere near the dollar total that commands most people's attention.

Interestingly, the Palace Station Courtyard's own website doesn't give all-inclusive pricing, either. When you book a room, its site gives an estimated total, including tax, but the resort fee is mentioned only in an easily-overlooked bullet point in the booking terms and conditions.

Since Hotwire doesn't disclose the names of hotels until you've paid for a non-refundable stay, its resort-fee disclosure is cloaked in opacity too. Like other sites, Hotwire initially displays only hotels' base rates. Unfortunately, there's no way to narrow a Hotwire hotel search to exclude properties that charge resort fees.