10 Worst Hotel Rip-Offs and How to Beat Them

Resort Fees and Other Mandatory Charges

Mandatory fees are worse than simple rip-offs—they're outright scams. Hotels, especially in popular tourist areas like Hawaii and Las Vegas, advertise artificially reduced lowball prices, then increase costs with additional fees after the initial purchase. The fees can run from only a few dollars to as high as $50 per night at expensive places—which is certainly enough to distort your search for the best hotel deal.

Don't be fooled by the laundry list of amenities supposedly covered by those fees. If the fee is mandatory, it's part of the price. This scam calls for legal action, but so far the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has failed in its duty to protect the public, and online travel agencies (OTAs) haven't stepped up to their responsibilities to provide honest all-up price listings either, which they clearly could be doing.

Work-Around: Effectively none. If you want to stay on Waikiki, in Vegas, or in many other prime tourist areas, you have to pay. Often, just pinning down these fees requires a hassle you don't need—and shouldn't have to face.

Expensive Wi-Fi Fees at Posh Hotels

If a $60-per-night highway motel can manage to offer free in-room Wi-Fi access, it's hard to fathom why a $600-per-night luxury hotel has to charge extra for the same service. I checked January rates at the 25 hotels in New York City that Expedia lists as "five star," and I found that 13 of the 25 charge extra—typically $15 per night—for in-room Internet access. All 13 guilty hotels have Expedia room rates of $375 or higher, seven of them charge more than $600 per night, and one of them lists its lowest rate as $955 per night.

Work-Around: Lots of deluxe hotels don't charge extra for Wi-Fi, so if you plan to get online, book at a place with no-charge Wi-Fi access.

Minibars

This one has been around for a long time, and just about everyone who has studied it has concluded that the markups hotels apply to minibar drinks and snacks are outrageous. Fellow consumer advocate Christopher Elliott recently reported on a $10 Coke in a minibar, and according to Mint.com, lots of minibar prices are set at double to four times the going rates. My guess is that hotels are shooting themselves in the foot on this one; they'd make more profit by selling far more stuff at reasonable prices.

Work-Around: Easy—just ignore the minibar.

No Ice Machines

Here's another case wherein $60 motels do better jobs than upscale places. You can find an ice machine down the hall on most floors of ordinary motels, but at many upscale places, the only way to get some ice is to call room service and pay the fee plus a tip.

Work-Around: None, unless you like warm beer.

Excessive Tipping

When my father first sat me down and told me the facts of life—a traveler's life, that is—he taught me that the standard restaurant and taxi tip was 10 percent, that hotel porters should get 50 cents per bag if they carry your bag to your room, that airport "skycap" baggage handlers should get 50 cents per bag, and that I shouldn't have to tip anyone else. Obviously, that was a long time ago, and since then, tipping in the U.S. has gotten out of control. Housekeeping services should be covered by the room rate, concierges should tell you how to get to Carnegie Hall (yes, I know: "Practice, man, practice!"), doormen should call you a cab without expecting a few extra dollars.

Sadly, that's no longer the case. I've even seen reports of mandatory tipping and fees for "porterage," even when you schlep your bags yourself. I just returned from a few weeks in Europe, and I really liked the "what you see is what you pay" tipless pricing—but it hasn't caught on in the States. Sad.

Work-Around: Yes, in most cases, you don't have to leave tips for practically everyone—but if you don't, you're a cheapskate.

Trendy Hotels with Tiny Rooms

When you pay double or triple the cost of a budget hotel room, you should expect substantially more in the way of accommodations: a room of at least 350 square feet, a king bed or two queens, a good-sized desk or work area with a lamp and accessible electrical outlets, a comfortable sitting chair with a reading lamp, and a large bathroom with both a walk-in shower and tub—for starters. So I cringe when I see a hotel that charges top dollar for a 200-square-foot room with minimal furnishing—but boasts a "designer" interior, a "hip" ambience, and a "luxury" brand of shampoo. C'mon, folks, you've all heard the saying, "We sell the sizzle, not the steak," and all too many expensive hotels are mostly sizzle and very little steak.

Work-Around: Again, don't bite on the hype. Insist on real value.

Parking Fees at Suburban Hotels

No one expects free parking at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, the Chicago Loop, or San Francisco's Union Square. But at a suburban low-rise hotel surrounded by a large parking lot, you don't expect to pay extra. Unfortunately, sometimes you do. I've encountered pay parking lots at suburban hotels in several areas, and I suspect you have as well.

Work-Around: Theoretically, you can check ahead and find a place that doesn't charge. But finding out about the parking charge isn't always easy. In my experience, hotels sometimes don't show parking charges on their websites. The best solution may be to check the hotel listing on an OTA such as Expedia or Hotels.com, regardless of where you made the reservation, because those sites may offer additional information.

Laundry Services

The last time I stayed in a mid-priced London hotel, I checked the laundry-service price list and found that I could buy new underwear and socks at Marks & Spencer for less than the hotel charged to launder my own stuff. You find the same situation in many other big cities. Certainly, offering one-day service with pickup and delivery in your room entails costs that are higher than running a conventional laundromat, but many rates I've seen are outrageous. Because hotel laundry can be a great convenience, many travelers pay the excessive charges, but they're rip-offs nevertheless.

Work-Around: So far, nobody has completely resolved the travel-laundry problem. Yes, you can do your own in the bathroom sink, but clothes don't wash or dry well this way and the process takes up a lot of time that you could better use sightseeing or doing business. Ditto searching out a coin-op laundromat and waiting there for the machines to do their thing. Finding a laundromat with "attended" wash-and-fold service may be the best compromise, but it still takes time and involves hassle.

Room Service

These days, room service adds as many as three separate charge layers to the base cost:

• Prices on room-service menus are typically higher than on the hotel restaurant's sit-down menu.
• Hotels add a room-service fee and a service charge.
• The person who delivers the food still wants a tip.

Work-Around: Lots of hotels now allow outside restaurants to deliver to hotel guest rooms. In fact, many hotels leave menus or information about nearby places that deliver in the guest information books. This works best if you like pizza or Chinese.

Foreign Exchange

A hotel's cashier desk is one of the few places you're likely to find an exchange rate that's even worse than the rate at an airport exchange desk. The gouge can be as high as 20 percent. This gouge was once a real hardship for travelers who ran out of local currency on weekends, but the growth of ATMs and credit cards means it's no longer an issue in most of the world. But it can still be a problem in developing countries where plastic isn't as ubiquitous as elsewhere.

Work-Around: Just step outside to the nearest ATM. Don't worry that you might lose 3 percent on the deal; you'd lose several times that much in the hotel.

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