In the past one of Caesars Entertainment hotels marketing boosts was that its Last Vegas hotels charged no resort fees. As of March 1st resort fees were added at all of Caesars Last Vegas hotels including Caesars Palace, Paris Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood, Ballys, Rio, Harrahs Las Vega, Flamingo and The Quad.
Caesars launched a Facebook page at one point which asked visitors to join the fight against Las Vegas resort fees.
This new resort fee will cover Internet access, local calls and fitness center usage. Guests will not be able to opt out of this fee which will be added automatically to the bill.
Caesars acknowledges that this move will upset some people but points out that resort fees are standard at most Las Vegas Hotels. The hotel claims that its decision to implement resort fees was in response to guests requesting them. Supposedly surveys indicated that guests wanted to pay a package price for services instead of having the inconvenience of separate fees.
Travel experts are skeptical. They view mandatory resort fees as not a benefit for guests, but instead as pure profit for hotels. Many guests will end up paying for services that they dont use such as using cell phones vs. in room phones or using a hotels Wi-Fi to surf the Web when they can use their own data plans to do the same thing. Similarly few people go to Las Vegas intending to use the fitness center.
U.S. hotels charged a record $1.95 billion in fees and surcharges last year.
Resort fees in Las Vegas are common, with many of its best known hotels, including Bellagio, Cosmopolitan, Luxor, and Mandalay Bay, currently charging them. Typically these fees cover Internet access, local calls, and fitness center usage. Some also provide free (i.e., no additional charge) amenities such as daily newspaper delivery and airline boarding pass printing.
While most travelers say that they hate resort fees, they have become resigned to paying them. They are not going to cancel trips over this fee. It is because of this that more hotels are rolling out resort fees and those fees already in place are unlikely to be rolled back.
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