Las Vegas Resort Fees

Many visitors to Las Vegas are surprised by an annoying fee that gets added to their hotel room rate, called a Resort Fee. This Resort Fee is an extra fee that hotels charge. Its not optional. The reasons why hotels charge Resort Fees is related to the rise of price comparison travel booking websites such as Expedia and Priceline. These sites list the headline room rate for many different hotels, allowing consumers to price compare. This competition encourages hotels to compete on price, thereby encouraging them to lower their price in order to attract bookings. The nature of the price comparison site also means the hotels must pay the booking site in order to be listed, and the fee is based on the value of the bookings. So if a hotel lowers the rate they list their rooms for on a booking site they will get better search results, and since the fee paid by the hotel to the booking site is related to the headline room rate, the hotels have an incentive to charge additional fees to the guest once on site, in order to bypass the booking fee. With this system, there is an incentive for the hotel to bypass the booking site as much as possible, hence the rise of Resort Fees.

I think Resort Fees are a type of bait and switch. Most hotel guests don’t read the fine print when they book their room, and I think its disingenuous for hotels to bury hidden fees in the fine print. This is especially true because the Resort Fee at many Las Vegas hotels is quite large, in some cases the Resort Fee is even more than the posted room rate itself.

As a frequent visitor to Las Vegas, I surveyed the current resort fee rates for future reference. The table below is up to date at the date of writing, but will change, so double check before you book.

Some notes, on the table below. I can’t find the Resort Fees for the Boyd properties downtown (California, Fremont, Main Street). I assume they charge resort fees though. Cannery hotels just started charging resort fees, and so did Arizona Charlies. The Cannery rates are still a good deal in my opinion (if you don’t mind the neighborhoods). The Downtowner now charges a resort fee (that must cause literal fist fights). Some of the resort fees are ridiculous, such as Excalibur, where the resort fee is sometimes higher than the room rate itself.

Updated March 12, 2018