Happy Friday Reader!
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Last week I talked about how I booked a hotel from Chase's The Edit collection instead of booking through Hyatt directly, in order to get premium benefits like free breakfast, a $100 credit, a room upgrade, early check-in, and late check-out.
Well, there was another big consideration that I missed and failed to calculate: resort fees, also called destination fees.
This is a fee that a hotel can charge to cover the cost of amenities offered such as a pool, gym, tennis courts, "free" activities, etc.
They can be a nominal amount of just several dollars, or as much as $40, $50, or more PER NIGHT. That's what makes these sneaky; the more nights you stay, the more you're paying out of pocket. Typically, the fee is disclosed somewhere in the booking process, although it can be easy to miss.
Not every hotel charges these fees, but many of the "nice" ones do.
For me, the resort fee at Hotel Magdalena, where we stayed, was $28 per night, so we ended up paying $84 for the 3 night stay, which I failed to take into consideration. However, after looking back at no point during the checkout process on Chase Travel did I see any indication I'd be paying a resort fee. When I paid at the hotel, I figured it was there and I just rushed through it. So now I'm in the process of trying to figure out whether that charge should have happened at all.
I sent a message to Chase through the online portal with attachments asking whether I should have been charged that fee and if I can get reimbursed. But I haven't heard a response yet, so this is still a developing story.
But here's the breakdown of how you might be able to get out of resort fees:
If I had booked this with Hyatt points directly, I would have had these fees waived, because Hyatt, whenever you book rooms with points, does not tack on resort fees.
But if you were to pay for the same hotels with cash via Hyatt, you would still have to pay the resort fees unless you have Globalist status. As a Hyatt Globalist, you also get resort fees waived even on paid stays.
Hilton also waives resort fees whenever you're booking hotels using points. However, they don't waive those fees during paid stays.
Wyndham is also supposed to waive resort fees whenever you book with points. However, there have been reports of hotels not being aware of that, so sometimes you do need to get Wyndham customer support involved in order to get those waived or reimbursed. However, any Caesars properties are excluded, and you will have to pay resort fees on those stays.
Virtually every other hotel program will charge you resort fees for paid or points bookings, including IHG, Marriott, I Prefer, Accor, Choice, etc.
So what about Chase Travel's The Edit program? Well that's TBA. I've seen mixed answers online, I assume it may come down to the individual hotel rather than a blanket policy from Chase, but stay tuned and I'll keep you updated next week.
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