The Holiday Inn Express & Suites Hudson I-94 surprisingly has an amenity fee, which is the same thing as a resort of destination fee. And it might just be the most honest resort fee, ever.
This is a Holiday Inn Express off the freeway, not a “resort.” It’s in Hudson, Wisconsin – not a major tourist “destination.” And it’s not even if Hudson’s ‘historic downtown’. And when you pull up the hotel’s amenities page they put Lay’s potato chips and Dorito’s front and center.
So what is the amenity fee for? What does it get you? Absolutely nothing. According to the hotel itself, the amenity fee is just part of the room rate, but breaking it out allows them to show you a lower rate.
According to an employee at their front desk, the amenity fee does not come with any amenities.
It’s actually an ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT FEE the owners put in place instead of raising the room rate.
Wait, what?
Yes, an ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT FEE, the owners put that in place instead of raising the room rate.
Marriott requires that hotels pursue a fiction that resort fees deliver value to guests. The resort fee’s inclusions must offer “complimentary services and amenities with a retail value that is at least four times greater than the destination or resort fee charged.”
That could include a yoga class once a week in the middle of the day at a downtown business hotel – such that no one would be able to take advantage of it. It could include discounts on overpriced local tours that the hotel is being paid to advertise to guests.
Everyone knows that resort fees are a scam. By taking part of the mandatory cost of a hotel room out of the room rate, the hotel looks less expensive than it really is. And even if the resort fee is disclosed prior to completing the reservation, it still makes the initial rate – the rate you’re comparing against other hotels in a search – seem less expensive.
Credit: Holiday Inn Express & Suites Hudson
The only reasons to have resort fees are to scam guests and to cheat taxing authorities or travel agencies that take a percentage of the room rate, but not a percentage of the total cost of the room. In other words, resort fees are literally fraud – both in intention and effect.
The Holiday Inn Express & Suites Hudson I-94 is being refreshingly honest about it, foregoing the pretense that the fee delivers something of value to guests outside of the room rate (but that still somehow isn’t valuable to guests, who wouldn’t opt into it on their own, and so it’s mandatory).