One Marriott is reportedly hiding parking charges as mandatory “City Fees” — even for guests without cars. It’s not the first hotel I’ve heard of doing this.

A reader shared how one hotel is sneaking in junk fees. She stayed at the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Plano, Texas, a property she’s visited several times before. She didn’t drive and didn’t park, but she was charged a $2.87 “City Fee” which exactly matches the advertised $2.87 parking fee at the hotel.

I happened to notice that the past free parking now said $2.87 a day. When I received my bill the morning of checkout, I connected the $2.87 ‘city fee’ because it matched what I saw under ‘parking fee.’ I stopped by the front desk and the agent happily removed it. But had my brain not connected the same numbers, I’d have had no idea.

She notes that there’s a “massive shopping center across the street with a Michael’s…The parking lot is not secured at the hotels, and, in fact, there is unlikely any enforcement since there’s no way to ascertain which cars had “paid” or not in the expansive parking lots…”

The charge wasn’t labeled “parking.” It looked like a municipal tax — something almost no guest would think to question. But the amount matched the property’s new daily parking fee. When she pressed the issue, the front-desk associate acknowledged the charge and removed it.

She added, “According to the front desk, this parking fee is relatively new; it baffled him too.”

Ben over at One Mile at a Time got the same email and reached the same conclusion: this looks like a deliberate obfuscation — calling a parking fee a “city fee” — and reportedly applying it to every guest, regardless of whether they have a car.

If true, that’s not just deceptive. It’s likely a violation of Marriott’s own fee-disclosure policies, which were tightened after the brand’s 2021 settlement with Pennsylvania’s attorney general. Hotels are supposed to clearly label all mandatory fees. Calling a parking fee a city tax would seem to do the opposite.

Now, a $2.87 ‘city fee’ that matches the advertised parking cost is suspicious. But it’s possible it could have been a coincidence. So I looked at the actual hotel taxes in Plano, noting different rates for the two nights of the stay – $116.10 and $98.10.

• In Plano the only legitimate “city” hotel tax is 7% of the room rate, so it can’t be the same dollar amount on two different nightly rates.

• There’s also a 6% state tax, although the guest was exempt in this case.

• The correct Plano 7% tax was charged on the folio – $8.13 on the $116.10 room rate and $6.87 on the $98.10 room night.

• Plano taxes are percentage-based, and can’t be the same $2.87 on nights with different rates.

• You also see a ‘state cost recovery fee’ on the folio. That is not a tax, and it’s not required by the government. It’s a hotel-imposed surcharge meant to recover what the hotel itself has to pay the state in business taxes and regulatory costs. (The hotel keeps this money.)

Susan, a Titanium elite who says she “lives in hotels year-round,” summed it up perfectly:

I don’t expect much from a Fairfield, but I expect honesty… I wish they all knew that many of us elect to stay elsewhere solely because of these trash fees.

It’s a small dollar amount — $2.87 — but the bigger story is how quietly this kind of nickel-and-diming spreads. A bogus three-dollar fee, multiplied across every occupied room, becomes meaningful revenue. And if it’s masked as a tax, it’s easy money and easily fraud.