A resort fee is a mandatory charge added to a hotel room rate that you cannot decline and did not choose. It buys wifi, a pool towel and a gym you may never enter. Since 2025 the law in the US and the UK has forced it into the advertised price, which has changed almost everything about how you spot one and almost nothing about your ability to refuse it.
The short answer
If the fee was shown to you before you booked, it is a term of the contract and you cannot refuse it. If it appeared for the first time at check-in or on the final bill, you have a real argument and a route to your money. Government taxes are a separate thing and are never refusable, whatever the desk calls them.
| What is on the bill | What it actually is | Can you refuse it |
|---|---|---|
| Resort, amenity, destination or facility fee, disclosed at booking | Part of the room price, charged per night | No. You agreed to it |
| The same fee, first seen at check-in or checkout | A charge outside the contract you accepted | Yes. Contest it, and escalate to your card issuer |
| Sustainability, urban or service fee added after you booked | A unilateral change to an agreed price | Yes, on the same basis |
| City tax, tourist tax, occupancy tax, climate levy | A statutory charge the hotel collects for the state | No. It is not the hotel’s money |
| Parking, breakfast, early check-in, minibar | Optional extras | Yes, if you did not use them |
What is the fee actually paying for?
Nothing that was not previously in the room rate. The standard bundle is wifi, pool and beach towels, gym access, local phone calls and a printed newspaper. Hotels charge it whether you use any of it or not, which is the point: it is revenue that does not depend on consumption.
The reason it exists is search ranking. Booking sites sort by nightly rate, so moving 40 dollars a night out of the rate and into a separate line moves a hotel up the list against a competitor that prices honestly. That is also why regulators went after it as a competition problem rather than a pricing one.
Is it still legal in 2026?
Yes. What is now illegal is hiding it. Three regimes matter, and none of them bans or caps the fee itself.
In the US, the Federal Trade Commission’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 CFR Part 464, took effect on 12 May 2025. It covers short-term lodging, defined to include hotels, motels, inns and vacation rentals. Section 464.2 makes it an unfair and deceptive practice to advertise a price without clearly and conspicuously disclosing the total price, and requires the total price to be displayed more prominently than any other pricing information. Total price is defined in section 464.1 as the maximum total of all charges the consumer must pay, including mandatory add-ons. Section 464.3 separately bans misrepresenting the nature, purpose, amount or refundability of any fee. The Commission’s own analysis of the rule put the benefit to US hotel and home-share bookings at 27.2 to 39.6 million hours of search time saved a year, worth between 702 million and 1.02 billion dollars.
California went further and earlier. AB 537 has been operative since 1 July 2024 and forbids a short-term lodging provider from advertising a room rate that excludes any fee required to stay, with civil penalties up to 10,000 dollars per violation. The FTC rule expressly preserves stronger state law under section 464.4, so the Californian standard stands.
In the UK, the drip pricing provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 have applied since 6 April 2025. Section 230(4) defines the total price as including any fees, taxes, charges or other payments the consumer will necessarily incur, and section 230(5) requires that the information be given with equal prominence to the headline price.
Note the gap between the two. The US rule lets government charges sit outside the advertised total price, so an American quote can still be lower than what you pay. The UK definition pulls taxes in. A price on a UK-facing site should be the price.
Enforcement is real and it is mostly coming from US state attorneys general rather than the FTC. Texas settled with Hyatt for 1.25 million dollars on 30 December 2025 over mandatory fees disclosed too late to alert bookers, and the terms require full disclosure of any fee added to a room price. That was the state’s sixth such settlement, after Marriott, Omni, Choice Hotels, Hilton and Booking.com.
So can you refuse to pay it?
The question is not whether the fee is fair. It is whether it was in the contract you agreed to. Four situations, four answers.
- Shown at booking, in the total, and you clicked through it. You owe it. Arguing at the desk wastes your morning and the clerk cannot waive it anyway.
- Shown at booking but buried, for instance in a link below the payment button. You owe it in contract terms, but the disclosure itself may breach the FTC rule or the DMCC. That is a complaint to a regulator, not a reason to withhold payment at checkout.
- Never disclosed until you arrived. This is the strong case. The charge was not part of what you agreed to pay, and the hotel is adding a term after the fact.
- Disclosed, but for a facility that did not exist or was closed for your whole stay. Section 464.3 covers misrepresenting the nature and purpose of a fee. A pool fee for a drained pool is the clearest version of that argument.
How do you contest one that was never disclosed?
Do it in this order, and do the first step before you hand over a card.
- Ask at the desk for the fee to be removed, and say why: it was not in the confirmation. Have the booking confirmation open on your phone.
- If they refuse, ask for the refusal and the fee in writing on the folio before you check out. A printed folio naming the charge is the evidence your card issuer will want.
- Pay under protest rather than walking out. Refusing to settle a hotel bill turns a billing dispute into a different and much worse problem.
- Raise it with your card issuer when you are home. In the UK a card payment over 100 pounds brings Section 75 into play alongside the chargeback route, both of which are set out in our playbook on chargebacks and Section 75 for travel.
- Report it. In the US that is the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and the state attorney general, which is the mechanism that produced the Texas settlements. In the UK it is Trading Standards through the Citizens Advice consumer service.
Where does the math go wrong?
Five traps, in rough order of how much they cost.
- Comparing nightly rates across sites after the rules changed. A compliant site now shows a higher number than a non-compliant one for the same room. The cheap-looking quote is often the one breaking the law.
- Assuming a points booking is fee-free. Award nights at most chains still carry the resort fee in cash, which can make a free night cost 50 dollars.
- Treating a tourist tax as a hotel invention. It is a statutory charge, it is legitimately outside the US advertised total, and the desk has no power over it. The Greek climate resilience fee, at 15 euros a room a night for a five-star between April and October under Law 4389/2016 as amended, is charged exactly this way.
- Booking a non-refundable rate to save on a resort fee you have not counted. Run the total, not the rate, the same way you would with an all-inclusive board supplement.
- Leaving the dispute until you are home with no folio. The paper you needed was printed at checkout, and the hotel is under no obligation to reissue it in the form you want.
Frequently asked questions
Did the FTC rule ban resort fees? No. The rule regulates disclosure only. It says explicitly that it does not prohibit any type or amount of fee. Hotels responded by moving the fee into the headline rate, which is what the rule was for.
Can the hotel add a fee after I booked? Not to a price you already agreed. A fee introduced between booking and arrival is a change to an agreed term, and it is the situation where a chargeback is most likely to succeed.
Does the FTC rule protect me if I book from the UK? It applies to the seller’s conduct in the US market, so a US hotel selling to you is covered. Your practical remedy is closer to home: a UK-facing site owes you a total price under section 230 of the DMCC Act, and your card issuer is in the UK.
Are resort fees refundable if I never use the wifi or the gym? No, and that is the design. The fee is mandatory and is not tied to consumption. The exception is a facility that was closed or absent for your stay, where misrepresentation arguments start to work.
Should I just pick hotels with no resort fee? Compare totals, not the presence of a fee. A 180 dollar room with a 45 dollar fee and a 230 dollar room with none are the same booking, and the second one is worse if you were going to pay for parking anyway.
Sources: Federal Trade Commission, Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 CFR Part 464, published at 90 Fed. Reg. 2066, effective 12 May 2025, govinfo.gov. California AB 537 (2023), operative 1 July 2024, leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 230, legislation.gov.uk. Office of the Attorney General of Texas, settlement with Hyatt Hotels, 30 December 2025, texasattorneygeneral.gov. Greek climate resilience fee, Law 4389/2016 article 53 as amended by Law 5162/2024 article 24, AADE circular A.1202/2024.
Researched from primary sources and checked August 2026. General information, not advice.
