For former dean, hotel surcharges take the bill

Outspoken hotel industry expert Anthony Marshall has taken aim at the lodging industry's infatuation with charging fees for stuff that used to be free.

In a "hotel bloopers" speech to the Florida Hotel and Motel Association, the former dean of the hotel management program at Florida International University unloaded on properties that try to sugar-coat fees with bogus explanations.

Not that fees gouging guests are new. "I've actually had hotels try to charge me more to clean my clothes than it cost to buy them," Marshall said.

But hotels tread on thin ice when they try to sneak fees onto your bill. Marshall recalled one hotel adding insult to injury by tacking a 3 percent "administrative charge" on top of a room service tab that had been inflated by a $3 room service charge and an 18 percent mandatory gratuity. Some hotels charge $4.25 if a guest takes even a sip from a bottle of mineral water that housekeepers place invitingly on the TV stand or bathroom vanity, rather than inside the minibar.

Some hotels have layered on "mandatory" fees so they can post lower rates to prospective guests booking a room. Guests don't discover the add-ons until check-in or checkout.

Florida consumer fraud investigators have made cases against hotels that tacked on "energy surcharges" in 2001 without disclosing them in advance.

The latest version is the mandatory "resort fee." It adds $10 to $15 a night to the bill. Tent cards in the room and reservation clerks typically explain that the "fee" entitles guests to "unlimited" local telephone calls and trips to the exercise room.

In short, services guests might expect to be free.

"We spend millions to gain the trust of Americans to spend a night with us, then we make them feel like they've been taken," said Marshall, who heads the American Hotel and Motel Association's education institute in Orlando.

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