In the latest of a series of ridiculous mandatory fees that are charged by lodging companies, this hotel charges a 5% mandatory recycling fee as alerted in the Comments section of this article pertaining to three new ridiculous mandatory lodging fees by Dave, who is a reader of The Gate With Brian Cohen.
This Hotel Charges a 5% Mandatory Recycling Fee.
The hotel property in question is the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Naples Downtown – 5th Ave, which explains what it calls its Green Hotel Initiatives:
GREEN HOTEL INITIATIVES We are currently charging an eco-fee of 5% plus the applicable taxes for each room night to help fund programs such as: Recycling of all batteries, light bulbs, electronics, printer toners, newspapers, cardboard, plastic bottles, glass and cans, paints, oils and solvents, as well as scrap metal.
The first glimpse of this fee is when first searching for room rates, with the clue that the rate “Excludes 5% Service Charge.”
Only when going more in depth during booking the reservation does the potential guest find out about the mandatory Green Hotel Initiatives service fee.
In the case of the sample reservation above when checking in on Thursday, May 23, 2024 for one night, the service fee amounts to $8.27.
Does the revenue from the fee actually go towards recycling? Who knows?!?
All Kinds of Mandatory Fees
The relentless onslaught of mandatory “hidden” fees have become increasingly prevalent within the United States; and they have slowly been spreading to other countries. Lodging companies engage in charging these fees to advertise artificially “lower” rates to attract unsuspecting customers — only to alert the customer pertaining to the addition of mandatory fees during the process of booking a reservation and justifying the extra fee with some nonsense items that are designed to give the illusion of adding value. For example, this mandatory resort fee includes notary services with a maximum of two documents per day.
An increasing number of hotel and resort properties — and even hostels and motel properties, for that matter — have been charging guests a mandatory:
- Resort fee
- Room fee
- Destination fee
- Amenities fee
- Facilities fee
- Damage waiver fee
- Daily Curation fee
- Housekeeping surcharge — remember when housekeeping used to be part of the room rate?
- Fee for having a safe in the room — but yet the hotel property is not responsible for valuables
- Parking recapture fee — whatever that is
- Baggage/Porterage fee
- Historical Commitment fee — which should be more aptly named the Hysterical Commitment fee
- Hotel Worker Protection Ordinance Costs Surcharges — which is the result of a law that was passed back in 2022 in the city of Los Angeles
Imagine these few of many examples of being:
- Charged as much as $8,257.00 for staying a week at this resort property
- Forced to pay both a service charge and a resort fees on the same hotel folio
- Charged a mandatory resort fee of $40.00 plus tax twice per night of the same stay at the same hotel property
Astonishingly, guests even get to have the privilege of paying taxes on most mandatory fees. In some cases, the mandatory fees are actually more expensive than the room rate itself. For example, a room rate that was advertised at $23.45 per night wound up totaling $79.37 per night when all of the taxes and mandatory fees were added, which is an increase of greater than 238.46 percent — or more than triple the initial advertised rate.
Remember that one simple way to reclaim that mandatory resort fee which you paid is still possible.
Final Boarding Call
If management of the hotel property wants to help the environment, let them pay for it out of their profits. Gouging guests with a mandatory fee of five percent of the room rate — whether or not those guests support the green recycling initiatives — is simply not ethical.
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
