Rather than bundling them into room rates, many hotels have made resort fees more explicit. The Phoenician, a Marriott Luxury Collection resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for example, has a resort fee page on its website, indicating what guests get for their daily fee of $45 per room fee: Wi-Fi (worth, it states, $14.95), morning yoga ($30), one hour of tennis ($75), one hour of pickleball ($75), bikes ($35) and a craft beer tasting.
Hotels have yet to recover from the pandemic — according to the A.H.L.A., room revenue is expected to be down nearly $44 billion in 2021 compared to 2019 — potentially making fees more attractive.
“My research shows that large, full-service, resort hotels have been hurt particularly badly by Covid, and they’re still reeling from its effects,” wrote John W. O’Neill, a professor and the director of the Hospitality Real Estate Strategy Group at Pennsylvania State University, in an email. He added that some have adopted “partitioned pricing,” the…