Finally An Honest Resort Fee: At This Holiday Inn It Includes Absolutely Nothing

May 23, 2023

by Gary Leff on June 6, 2023

Resort fees are a bad practice that are highly deceptive. But hotels go through hoops to pretend they’re good for you. Marriott only lets hotels with above-average likelihood to recommend scores impose them and requires a package of ‘benefits’ that have a retail value at least four times as high as the fee itself.

Hotels really stretch to list amenities of value that are included in their resort fee, like the Hyatt which claimed it gave you access to the bathroom mirror or the Hilton which included use of the in-room TV.

These backflips are disingenuous at best. So it's refreshing when a hotel is honest that the resort fee is nothing but an add-on, and provides literally no value to the guest.

The The Holiday Inn Express and Suites in Alamosa, Colorado charges a $7.95 amenity fee. This isn't a resort, so they can't really call it a resort fee. And Alamosa isn't exactly an urban destination, so urban destination fee is out. But what kind of amenities can they possibly have to charge a mandatory extra fee for?

Fortunately you can discover on the IHG site just what is included for this extra charge that isn't shown up front as part of the room rate. And you’ll learn that the answer appears to be absolutely nothing.

More hotels should simply state, as this one does, that the add-on fee doesn't actually get you anything. They should stop pretending you get some bundle of value when you don't.

I actually like that this hotel doesn't bother displaying a list of bogus benefits like a once a week yoga class outdoors at 3 a.m. in winter and a free underwater basket weaving class with mandatory extra charge for snorkel gear.

It's a Holiday Inn Express. What extra amenities? None of value, whatsoever. They’ll charge you an add-on fee anyway, just because.

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