What Doctors Can Learn from Hotel Resort Fees

I recently booked a hotel in New York City where I hope to spend several delightful days this coming June.  During the booking process, the hotel’s representative read off a dizzyingly list of taxes and fees that I would be paying.  I don’t think I’ve ever been saddled with so many surcharges on any transaction in my entire life, except for the last time I booked a NYC hotel. I felt that I needed to call my accountant for guidance. Many hotels have become green with envy  (or should I say greed with envy?) over state and local taxing authorities who fleece hotel guests.  Why should hotels, who are highly trained fleecers, be left out?

Fortunately for me, I won’t have a car.  Anyone familiar with NYC knows the insanity of bringing a car there.  Beyond the expense involved, and the seemingly impossibility of finding a parking space, there’s the sheer joy of taking a drive through midterm crawling through gridlock with horns bleating while receiving lovely gestures from fellow motorists.

Had I decided to drive to my hotel, the daily self-parking fee would be a modest $45-$55, with an increase if I opted for valet parking. 

While guests like me can wriggle out of the parking fees by simply leaving the car at home, there is no escape hatch for the Hotel Facilities Fee, also known as the Resort Fee.  When I first confronted this shakedown years ago, I felt that it was a stick up.  This is a mandatory fee that a hotel charges and then gives you some products and services that you didn’t request and may not want or need.  Sound reasonable? 

Indeed, the Resort Fee is so odious that the president referred to it in the recent State of the Union Address saying, “we’re going to ban surprise resort fees that hotels charge on your bill.” 

The daily Facility Fee at my hotel includes nothing I want or typically pay for elsewhere.  For instance, it includes a one-time $15 dry cleaning credit.  In NYC, this might permit me to dry clean one of my socks.

At least I'll get a clean sock.

Imagine if all retailers adopted this principle of forcing customers to purchase a gift card along with your desired purchase.  The gift card would only be valid for a brief time interval and could only be used for a short list of specified products.  Would you patronize such a store?

The medical profession years ago adopted its own version of the Facility Fee, which I vigorously criticized.  These fees were added to patient’s bills when an 'out-patient' office building was owned by a hospital system, which allowed this fee to be charged.  So, patients who would have sworn that they were in an out-patient office were charged a hospital facility fee even thought their feet never entered a hospital!  

What if I incorporated my own Resort Fee into my medical practice.  Each patient would pay an extra $75 which could be used for a sigmoidoscopy whether the patient needed it or not.  Valid for 14 days.

I wrote a respectful note to my hotel expressing my disagreement and displeasure with the Resort Fee scheme.  I received an equally respectful response that the policy would not be waived.  It’s not a total defeat.  I will emerge from the experience with one clean sock.