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merica’s 45th president, Donald Trump, is reported to be the most active golfer among recent inhabitants of the West Wing – playing golf for roughly one-quarter of his time in office. Trump owns at least 17 golf courses around the world, including Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire, Scotland, with its famous Ailsa Open Championship


course rated the UK’s best in the 2018 rankings by Golf Monthly. Trump Turnberry, with its refurbished hotel, well-equipped facilities and two playing courses, following the opening of the “King Robert the Bruce” 18 holes last summer, is also considered a top meetings and incentive destination. Te resort is marketed under Marriott International’s Luxury Collection brand of upscale independent hotels. Yet, recently, Trump Turnberry was alleged by Te


Independent to be the first British hotel to introduce a practice found in many US hotels of imposing a mandatory charge (oſten called a “resort fee”) for “extra” services. Tese typically cover such amenities as wifi, use of the swimming pool and fitness facilities, and in-room coffee or bottled water. Turnberry’s “resort fee” was said to be a mandatory £20 a night on top of its room rates. Pricing rules in Scotland, the rest of the UK and the


EU require a hotel’s quoted rates to include all obligatory taxes and charges. Te Independent’s travel writer Simon Calder, who broke the story, said he believed the additional charge was now being included in the room rate, although the hotel had “declined to answer any questions about the fee”. Perhaps we should not have been surprised about the introduction of a fee – Trump hotel management has


The greens at Trump’s Turnberry resort


already successfully imposed a mandatory US$35 per night resort fee at its glitzy Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Unlike in the UK and European Union, there is no regulation in the US that prohibits “hidden” charges. Vegas, with its giant casinos and extravagant hotel


architecture, is viewed as the birthplace of mandatory resort fees, where they date back as far as the late 1990s. A novelty then, research from the resortfeechecker.com website suggests there are now more than 1,000 US-based hotels that impose a mandatory resort fee, averaging US$21 a night. Tis resort fee covers mostly leisure amenities that the


guest may or may not use, but which they are obliged to pay for. However, US hotels are also adding surcharges in other areas, according to New York University’s Tisch Centre for Hospitality and Tourism, which has been monitoring such extra fees for the past two decades. New surcharges it has identified include early check-in


and early departure fees, as well as charges for using the business centre, mini-bar restocking and leaving luggage with concierge staff. Te Tisch Centre’s Professor Bjorn Hanson says


that among other new fees being levied is “charging for unattended surface parking in suburban hotel locations. For groups, there have been new or increased charges for bartenders and other staff at events, along with special charges for set-up and breakdown of meeting rooms, as well as administrative fees for master folio billing.” He also noted the hotel industry “has become stricter


about cancellation of reservations, with fees for cancelling within two days of arrival being the most common, although it can be three days.” Last year, major chains including Marriott, Hilton and Intercontinental Hotels Group all imposed strict new policies on cancellation to avoid having unsold rooms at the last moment. As the airline industry so egregiously discovered some


years ago, there is nothing that was previously understood by travellers to be included in the airfare that now cannot be levied in extra fees and surcharges. Te Tisch Centre calculates that total hotel fees and


Turnberry’s resort fee was said to be a mandatory £20 a night on top of its room rates


surcharges in the US amounted to a record US$2.7bn last year – an increase of five per cent on 2016. Hanson points out that “many fees and surcharges are highly profitable, with incremental profitability of between 80 to 90 per cent or more of the amounts collected.” But he also notes that 2017 “was the first year we saw


a decline in internet access fees”, possibly due to more travellers in hotel loyalty schemes receiving free online access during their stay. Moreover, hoteliers’ efforts to charge a fee for guaranteeing a particular room type (such as a junior suite) have not been so successful, given the potential for guest dissatisfaction if the room required is not immediately available due to the logistics of preparing rooms for fresh occupancy. Yet Hanson does credit US hoteliers for being more


upfront than expected about levying fees and surcharges, rather than trying to hide them as is oſten


busin e s s t r a ve lle r . c o m APR IL → JUNE 2 0 18 63


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