Many hotels cheat customers with add-on fees. It’s a problem industry-wide when hotel prices are displayed excluding part of the price of the room (resort fee, destination fee, etc.) but at least they’re usually disclosed before you hit purchase. That makes it hard to compare rates, it’s deceptive, but it’s hardly the worst practice out there.
Some properties add mandatory fees that are not actually disclosed to guests when committing to a stay. They might charge a resort fee that’s not shown on the hotel’s website or in the confirmation e-mail. They might add an undisclosed extra fee for property taxes and energy fees. But hotels usually pick just one fraudulent fee.
In contrast, the IHG One Rewards Staybridge Suites Little Rock – Medical Center appears to hit the daily double.
When you book the hotel on the IHG.com website, no surcharges or fees are disclosed – only standard taxes totaling 14.6%. Ironically you’re implored, “Rest assured. This is your total price.” Oops, it’s not.
That’s because the Staybridge Suites Little Rock – Medical Center adds both an energy surcharge (you pay extra to use the lights in your room) and a merchant fee (a flat 3% fee to pay them by credit card, it seems).
When I spoke to the hotel I was informed that these “hotel fees that we have here at this hotel” and that they aren’t optional because “that’s a part of the rate.”
Now IHG has a deal with Chase to promote a co-brand credit card. But if you choose to take them up on the offer and use the card at this hotel, they’ll charge you a merchant fee to do so.
In most cases the amounts are small enough that most people won’t complain. One reader did, and reports that the hotel front desk wouldn’t budge. They were charged anyway. It’s not the five bucks a night so much (though it’s that, too). It’s that they are charging this to every guest, every night, all year long.
- The hotel appears to have 117 rooms
- At $5 per night per room, and 80% occupancy, that would equate to over $170,000 per year in junk fees for this property.
As icing on the cake, the reader – an IHG One Rewards Diamond member (top tier for nearly 20 consecutive years) – reports the hotel “[a]lso will not provide early checkin, late checkout” – so more fees, fewer benefits, even if the IHG website doesn’t tell you this you’ll now know what you’re in for at this hotel.
It’s kind of possible those fees are rolled into the rate displayed on IHG’s website at booking.
I have booked Wyndham hotels where the booking confirmation page would say that the total price was merely estimated, and would vary depending on what unspecified fees the hotel may or may not charge. Thanks, Wyndham.
All this underscores the problem with low rent hotel chains like Wyndham and IHG. IHG is only slightly better. I have never paid a junk fee at a Marriott, Hyatt, or Hilton hotel. And those three chains are much more likely to grant late check-outs.
Remember, chain hotels join the best chain they are capable of joining. A Wyndham is a Wyndham because it does not meet the brand standards of anything else. An IHG is an IHG because it does not meet the brand standards of Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton.
While unseemly I’m not sure this is illegal. Most states allow credit card add on fees although that is usually in independent restaurants and not hotels (especially since IHG and Chase promote cards). I’m n the energy fee I just visited Copenhagen and our hotel had a fee (about $5 US per person per day) as an add on energy fee. Of course the Ukrainian war is hitting energy prices in Europe so I can understand that. Not as applicable to the US but likely not illegal.
Doubt a credit card dispute would work so only options are avoid the hotel or escalate to IHG to put pressure on the owner to remove the charges.
IMHO this is the “new normal” so expect many more similar such fees. Once they start hard to stop them
@Youngblood “It’s kind of possible those fees are rolled into the rate displayed on IHG’s website at booking.”
They are not. The IHG website shows 14.6% in taxes. The hotel is charging 14.6% in taxes PLUS the merchant fee and energy surcharge. They are not rolling up these hotel fees into taxes (which would, itself, be deceptive).
“I have never paid a junk fee at a Marriott, Hyatt, or Hilton hotel.”
You are lucky 😉 I have documented many such fees.
@AC whether or not it’s illegal it’s fraudulent (in the moral, not statutory, sense).
And at booking consumers are told THERE ARE NO OTHER FEES so I do think a mandatory, undisclosed fee is still illegal.
They may be able to impose an ‘energy surcharge’… but not if they do not disclose it up front. And here they even provide an ex ante assurance that there will be no such fees!
Class action lawsuit would slow if not stop this kind of garbage.
@Gary: You’re missing what @Youngblood is saying. He’s saying that the total room rate displayed during booking on the IHG website might already include the extra fees that show up on the receipt at checkout, and you wouldn’t know for sure without comparing the original online booking with the final receipt.
I don’t think that’s LIKELY, but it’s possible.
Credit card fees are a different category since those are not mandatory. That’s a fairly standard practice nowadays as well but the focus should be on those fees that are not avoidable and clearly should be part of a room rate.
IGH hotel has refused to give me a room I reserved several months in advance. I will never go to an IGH hotel again and I travel a lot.
@Chris Raehl – No, I compared what IHG displays during the booking process. It shows the actual taxes, and those show up on the receipt at checkout also. IHG does *not* show these fees during the booking process.
And they are *not* bundling these fees, misrepresenting them as taxes. The tax amount the IHG site shows during the booking process amounts to only the actual real taxes, and those are included on the guest receipt matching exactly – and the guest is ALSO charged these fees, which are not shown anywhere up front, not at IHG.com and not in the confirmation email.
@gary leff
I think you’ve not quite understood the point the other posters are making. They’re saying that it’s possible that these fees were bundled into the online room rate.
Simplified example for illustration:
Rate online: $180
Taxes online: $20
Total: $200
Bill at check out says:
Rate: $170
Undisclosed fees: $10
Taxes: $20
Total: $200
So the question is, was the final charge to the reader the price displayed online and in their reservation confirmation, or were these fees truly tacked on without any previous disclosure at checkout?
@FormosaROC – “They’re saying that it’s possible that these fees were bundled into the online room rate.”
This appears not to have been the case, both based on email confirmation of rate versus hotel folio and from speaking with the hotel.
@ All questioning wether the quoted rate includes these fees — Here’s a quote from the IHG webiste taken just now:
Rate
1 night stay
108.00 USD
Taxes
15.80 USD
Total price
123.80 USD
IHG has an arbitration policy, and there are several law firms online that will file an arbitration at no cost to you, and the cost of your stay will end up free or you might even get paid if they pull this on you.
Besides the bad stay at the Holiday Inn Kensington Station, London, when I complained to Chase regarding the charge, they did nothing.”We can’t find an accounting error.” was the excuse. I would have been willing to pay a reduced rate for my bad state but…wait…my card WAS an IHG Chase card. Why would they find problems against their bread and butter? I paid the full bill, cut up my card, closed my Chase account, transferred my IHG points to something that might be better and told IHG “buh bye”. “Step on my toes the first time…your fault. Step on my toes a second time…my fault.”
Plus tax on the Energy Fee!
Well, I suppose that while the Devil is in the details I’m not sure it’s helpful to become mired in the minutiae of the charges.
If we can stipulate for the purpose of debate that this hotel is adding charges over and above what IHG says will be the final price, then a not unreasonable question should be “What is IHG going to do about it?”
Perhaps @Gary should ask them?
Give these hotels bad rating. Rip them on TA, Google, Yelp. Don’t budge when they reach out and offer to make it right. It’s the only way they will sway.
Has anyone actually reconcile the rate reserved to the actual charges to confirm these charges are extra and not properly disclosed? The two pictures listed are for 2 distinct reservations – one for the future, and one past stay.
And if these are truly extra charges, wouldn’t a chargeback for the extra amount solve the problem, (and in the process lowers the property’s rating for the credit card processor)?
Thank you, Gary, for your investigative report that the Staybridge Suites at the Little Rock Medical Center, an IHG hotel, continues scamming guest customers by charging undisclosed extra fees when you pay with your credit card. This IHG property also bills an undisclosed energy surcharge fee for supplying electricity to the light bulbs in your room, elevator, hallway, and stairwells. I never knew IHG hotel guests would get Bonvoyed when staying at an IHG property. Good to learn guests holding an IHG credit card will also get scammed.
@ AdamH — Excellent suggestion for TA review!
Pet fees-not deposits-of $50 and $75 are not disclosed up front. Total ripoffs.
@ptacha “Has anyone actually reconcile the rate reserved to the actual charges to confirm these charges are extra and not properly disclosed?”
Yes.
@Gary: Who? Not you, obviously, since you never verify anything, but if someone has, let’s see an online booking and the receipt FOR THE SAME RESERVATION.
I’d even accept an, “I, Gary Leff, called the hotel in question and asked them if the online booking rate of $XXX for the night of MM/DD included the energy surcharge, and the hotel said….”
Again, I’m not saying it’s *LIKELY* that the hotel is bundling the fees in the online reservation and breaking them out in their own receipt, but no one has actually SHOWN that that’s the case. You’re just (typically lazily for you) insisting it must be true without any actual verification.
I can’t tell if you’re actually too obtuse to understand multiple other poster’s comments on this, or you’ve realized you once again didn’t do any due diligence and are just pretending you don’t understand.
@ptahcha: If anyone has, it wasn’t the author of this blog.
Although our “foremost expert in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel” also can’t tell that the “cabin” where an actress is wrapping a row of seats in saran wrap isn’t an actual aircraft either.
@ Chris Raehl — Why are you having a tantrum at Gary? I have stayed at this hotel, and no the hotel is not bundling these ripoff fees. They are adding them on top of the rate displayed at booking and in the confirmation email. They are fraudulent charges.
@Gene: Because Gary has a history of reposting unverified (and unproofread) clickbait, including posts anyone with his claimed level of expertise should know are completely false.
And in this comment thread in particular, posted at least twice either not understanding or feigning to not understand what people meant when they pointed out that fees broken out on the check-out receipt might be included in the online rate.
Again, I don’t think that’s LIKELY, and the hotel is almost certainly being shady, but that doesn’t absolve Gary of knowing what he’s “writing” about.
@ Chris Raehl — I vote that you start your own blog.
@Gene: Nah, there are already enough other great travel blogs out there. Gary just needs to step up his game.
@Chris Raehl – “Who? Not you, obviously, since you never verify anything”
You’re the one making unverified statements.
1) I spoke with the hotel
2) I’ve done the math on reservations and folios
3) I think you haven’t read the full comment thread, because when someone reframed their point I answered that clearly I thought?
I just checked out of the Home2 Suites IAH Beltway 8. I did the usual get my receipt emailed. Checking over it today, for EACH of the 3 nights i was charged an Additional $USD 5 per night as an “Environment Fee”. I am yet to take them to task, but I will be. USD 15 is about AUD 23. I will get a refund. And I will ask them to tell me why I wasn’t told when i booked or when I checked in. And I will ask for the detailed written explanation of how the Environment fee is derived, how it is calculated and what happens to it. I suspect i will be met with nil response. But lesson learnt, check your account before you check out and take them to task while you are on the scene of the crime. And make a huge scene in front of the other guests. That’ll sort them out. Bloody wankers. I am getting sick of it and it only happens in the USA. any wonder Chicago et al is like it is. People are so damn mad and angry at each other and everything and rip-offs like this drive people off the deep end.
Guys, give Chris Raehl a break. Math is hard.
I think Gary is pretty confident he knows what he’s talking about. He named names and put “consumer fraud” in the headline. He is right. The deception, lying, and cheating has gone on long enough. Time for legal action.
@Gary: Your original post says you talked to the hotel and they said the fees were part of the room rate. All of your subsequent comments on the issue are long the lines of they don’t show up in the taxes, but don’t address whether they’re included in the room rate quoted on the IHG site.
@DaveS: He may be confident, but he’s also sometimes wrong or blatantly misleading/lying. Gary lost his benefit of the doubt with me after his Saran Wrap post.
@Chris Raehl – AGAIN, I spoke to the hotel and they told me they required these fees to be paid on all room rates. They did not say that these are part of how they construct a room rate. That’s simply not the case.
Good G-d Gary is right. Chris should go away. Gary is adding value. Chris is promoting nonsense.
So Chris. Buh bye
If a hotel desk clerk tries to charge me a surprise junk fee that they will not remove, I just say, “Well, I guess that’s only fair since the hotel hasn’t paid my fee to be eligible for a 4 or 5 star review.” That makes them stop and think and then go back to speak to the manager. At that point, the charges are suddenly waived. So far.