Hotel workers in San Francisco have been on strike for months as they demand higher wages and more affordable healthcare. (A November demonstration at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco is pictured above.)
Perhaps in a bid to hit hotel owners where it hurts (right in the junk fees), the labor union Unite Here, which represents about 300,000 hospitality workers, has released an online guide walking hotel guests through how to demand a refund for a resort fee.
Though the union's big strike is in California at the moment, the organization's website ResortFeeRipoff.org does not limit its advice to hotel guests in that state. As the Resort Fee Ripoff site points out, hospitality behemoths such as Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt charge guests mandatory "resort fees for services you might not even want—or didn’t think you’d pay extra for"—in many U.S. markets, such as Las Vegas; Orlando, Florida; and Hawaii.
These unpopular fees for amenities that could reasonably be considered basics (such as business center access and in-room coffee) add as much as $55 plus tax per night in places like Las Vegas—and hardly ever cover a lot of stuff you might actually want, such as breakfast or parking.
When resort fees are tacked on to bills in a city not usually thought of as a resort town, hotels might re-label the charges as "destination fees." According to Unite Here, 75% of "full-service Marriott-flagged hotels in San Francisco" throw in such fees (which add a national average of about $38 per night), even for stays in rooms booked with rewards points.
In a press release, Unite Here argues that since "laws in 40 states protect consumers from having to pay for unwanted goods and services," consumers are within their rights to demand a refund for paying resort fees for hotel services the guest didn't ask for and didn't use.
And to make it easy for guests to demand that refund, the Resort Fee Ripoff site supplies easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions that include the state laws governing your hotel.
How to Demand a Resort Fee Refund
First, simply download Unite Here's sample complaint letter and fill in the blanks with your name, the location of the hotel that charged you the resort fee, and other details.
Unite Here's sample letter sets Marriott as the default recipient, but you can use the same framework to write to the customer care department of any major hotel company.
In the section of the complaint letter referring to the state law that the resort fee violates, paste the applicable excerpt from the database of relevant state regulations found under "Step 2" in the refund instructions at ResortFeeRipoff.org. (The state should be the one in which the hotel is located, not your home state.)
Asserts Unite Here: "40 states have laws that protect you in some manner from being forced to pay for unsolicited merchandise, goods, or services."
Finally, send your completed complaint letter to the appropriate customer service department.
The Resort Fee Ripoff site lists email addresses for Marriott's customer service department and chief customer officer. You can also search for customer service contact info at the websites of Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt.
Make sure you get contact info from the companies' official websites rather than search engines; scammers have been known to set up fraudulent customer service pages in order to steal personal data.
We can't guarantee you'll get a refund for the resort fee. But it's worth a shot. The more we protest these things, the more likely the hotel industry will feel pressured to change.
