I’ve got a little resort fee reverie in Vegas Seven this week:
Resort fees—those mandatory per-night add-ons of between $3 and $25 that include charges for services guests may or may not use during their stay—migrated to Las Vegas in the early 2000s, but have recently gotten a second wind. Caesars Entertainment had for years railed against them, even staging a showgirl “protest” march down the Strip in July 2011 to call attention to its policy of not charging a resort fee. Yet Caesars recently reversed course and began charging fees at its Las Vegas properties. And the South Point, another casino that had advertised its lack of resort fees, also started charging them.
If you can’t guess, I’m not a fan of resort fees. My feeling is that if you don’t like them as a customer, there’s no reason to implement them as a manager. Clearly that’s a minority opinion, or other people really do like them.