As mandatory resort fees continue to spread and proliferate throughout the lodging industry, ridiculous reasons to justify them have increased as well — and at this particular hotel property, the mandatory resort fee includes notary services…
This Resort Fee Includes Notary Services.
…but only a maximum of two documents per day — for $45.00 plus tax per night.
The hotel property in question is the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas, at which the:
Daily Resort Charge includes: Guest Internet access; fitness club access; fitness classes; pool services/experiences; house car service (2 mile radius); notary services (2 documents daily); local and toll-free calls.
What if a guest does not need the notary services? What if the guest does not want to participate in fitness classes? With the advent of mobile telephones and other portable electronic devices, who uses a landline telephone for local calls and toll-free calls these days?
At most hotel properties that do not charge guests a mandatory fee, access to the Internet is usually included in the room rate at no extra charge.
Final Boarding Call
I have stayed in many hotel and resort properties around the world over the years — and although the service might be of value to some people, I have never needed notary services…
…and in the rare event that I do need notary services, I can get them free of charge at any location of the bank where I have my checking account.
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
- Fee for having a safe in the room — but yet the hotel property is not responsible for valuables
- Parking recapture fee — whatever that is
- Historical Commitment fee — which should be more aptly named the Hysterical Commitment fee
Imagine being charged as much as $8,257.00 for staying a week at this resort property — or being forced to pay both a service charge and a resort fees on the same hotel folio.
Astonishingly, guests even get to have the privilege of paying taxes on these useless and nefarious mandatory fees.
If you are forced to pay a mandatory fee at a hotel or resort property, remember that there is one simple way to reclaim that mandatory fee which you paid — and it has reportedly been quite successful.
This nonsense of adding worthless mandatory fees takes advantage of unsuspecting guests who try to compare advertised rates between hotel and resort properties — with the inclusion of worthless “benefits” to justify those fees — has got to stop. The best way to do that is to stop patronizing hotel, motel, hostel, and resort properties which add on these fees. Do not fall for this garbage. Money talks when customers walk.
The Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas is on the left behind New York New York in the featured photograph at the top of this article. Photograph ©2022 by Brian Cohen.
