Resort Fee now at Plaza

[dewey089]

Well, hope this does not catch on downtown
Hotel Services in Downtown Las Vegas | Plaza Hotel & Casino

[SteveBourieOLD]

Re: Resort Fee now at Plaza

I guess that is the future for all hotels in Las Vegas?

[azlefty]

Re: Resort Fee now at Plaza

I believe resort fees are a way to avoid paying commission to online brokers such as hotels.com etc. When rooms are going for $30/night, saving a few dollars probably makes a big difference to the owners.

Bottom-Feeding the High Life: A Contrarian View on Resort Fees

[dewey089]

Re: Resort Fee now at Plaza

This writer makes an interesting argument and certainly brightens the outlook on the practice as it affects our bottom line purchases.
I don't think of the Orleans resort fee as substantial. That seemed odd. It is one of the smallest fees and I think of it as cheap. Also he has the wrong figure, it is six dollars a night there. And finally, if we book on B Connected, although they promise they will charge the fee, I have yet to be charged at Orleans, Gold Coast, or Sam's Town. This is an unadvertised special as I see it. When I asked why I wasn't charged, the clerks give vague answers about possible errors by the booking person or that it depends on how a room is booked. I'd be curious if anyone out there has paid a resort fee after booking on B Connected.
Last I knew Tuscany was $11.20 with tax and not $16. I'll call and chase that one down. It seems that others report it up around $16, so my information needs an update. And this underlines the idea that adding the mechanism of resort fees to the pricing structure keeps even those of us who try to follow the numbers on a regular basis, holding different mathematics. It is not like that resort fee is on the front page of the Tuscany website for easy checking.
The only other place to use resort fees downtown is the Gold Spike, and this may save them money as this blogger suggests; however, I think it is more a technique for getting their room rate to pop up first in a low to high search on booking sites, and especially a way to seem competitive with the El Cortez.
People just don't pay attention to the complications of their bookings.
The idea that somehow folks are educated on this practice contradicts my experience of meeting people all the time who don't have a clue about resort fees and many of them are surprised at check out.
Hotmail, for example, includes the resort fee in the price of the room, does not admit it and will not admit it on the phone or in writing, calls it a "service fee" and even does not edit their boilerplate fine print so that it looks like the Spike will charge a resort fee on top of what hotmail charges. The final cost of a room with taxes and fees is sometimes close to double what was advertised, but people must book there and just not pay any attention. I had one fellow writing that he had avoided the resort fee and then later retracting when he saw he had paid it as a "service fee" up front to hotmail.
If the VP at the D Long Bar can be filled up, then you know folks don't do the math of things, even when it is fairly simple.
So, I still think that a good bit of the motivation is to raise costs for the consumer by not posting the true price in advertisement (email specials come all the time with what looks like great deals until you read the fine print) or on searches on discounter sites.
That being said, it will be interesting to see what Plaza does. If they bring their room rates way down so the resort fee still makes them a good bargain, then it will just be a way to better compete with other downtown places by posting one rate and then finally charging another.
And I get the argument that if folks do the math, they can make better choices, but I have to say that in no single case when I did this was the resort fee place cheaper than a competitor except at the Gold Spike.
I'm not sympathetic to the argument that Vegas casinos are suffering and so I need to suck it in and help them out a bit. When I am suffering, I don't see them reaching in and helping me out. The economy is what it is. I'm more the guy taking advantage of the cheap deals while they last and if I can manage to find them before they change.
A tough market helps my sort of gambling.
If I want to dig in and help, I do it directly with tips to working people. I let the investor class take care of itself.
The casino and I are playing a game of poker. Sometimes I win.
Other times I lose.
Take this last trip and my favorite Flamingo poker room.
The game rakes on dollar for bonus awards: bad beat, high hand, freerolls, cracked Aces.
The Flamingo is good at giving tourists a good piece of the action. Even freerolls can be earned in a normal tourist stay if planned correctly.
Then the World Series of Poker comes to town.
The Flamingo knows that they will get the players without offering bonuses, so they cut back on them. The freeroll goes away. The Cracked Aces go away as well. At Imperial Palace even the high hand awards went south. They still rake the dollar, but they use it the month after when they can't count on the town filling up with tourists who love live poker.
Once Vegas recovers there will be fewer deals. So I don't need resort fees right now to help them out , thanks. My average nightly charge last trip for a stay of 23 days with three weekends, including Memorial Day was under $17, so even a $10 fee adds a substantial amount to my costs. At the D this time I had four nights for $15 average. I don't want to see resort fees come to all hotels downtown.

It is interesting to note that the Plaza includes wifi and the Tuscany charges $16 a night for that as well. With the end of Krispy Kreme free wifi, that might be a drawing card to make the resort fee pay its way. There is a fitness center there free to guests as well. The water and the parking are bogus benefits.

Thanks for posting this blog post. The angle was new to me and I appreciate having it.

[azlefty]

Re: Resort Fee now at Plaza

My apologies if the exact resort fees are incorrect. I will try to correct that.

I just booked the Tuscany and the resort fee is now $14, which is a ridiculous 44% of the $32 quoted room rate, bringing the total to $46/night + tax for the week after next during the week. However, the total is hard to beat for a 600-square foot room for my family with 2 young children, and probably as low as I can find for a room of that size just about anywhere.

To clarify, one of my concerns is that if room rates get too low, or if too much of the share of room rates goes to booking agencies, some places may have a hard time staying in business and will either shut down or consolidate even more, especially if they have heavy debt loads and go into bankruptcy and the assets are sold. If that happens, maybe only one company will own all of the downtown casinos and then will have more ability to raise prices, which would be bad for just about anyone reading this. This seemed to happen about 10 years ago on the strip, and it happens regularly in all kinds of industries. It also is likely to mean further cost cutting in terms of staffing and benefits.

I didn't intend to imply that you need to feel sorry for them, and I am just as aggressive as you are when trying to get a deal, without apology. If they are offering it, I'll take it. But it's hard to see how they can afford to stay in business for the long term and pay employees any kind of a wage and benefits on only $17 a night for a room at a full-service hotel. Assuming it takes 15 minutes for a housekeeper to clean, that alone probably costs about $3, plus security, debt service on the property, employee benefits (if any), etc - that has to be pretty close to $17 if not more. All I'm saying is, if they can make a few more dollars by avoiding paying the hefty commissions to hotwire, etc, on a percentage basis that can be significant.

That said, if you are leaving more than that in the machines or at the tables - the traditional Vegas business model - then it certainly could work. Or, alternatively, other less-savvy or infrequent guests, such as international travelers on packages, are paying considerably more than we are. I assume this is true because I sometimes see offers on groupon, etc. that are not as good as you can get just booking on the hotel web site.

Anyway, thanks for reading and appreciate your thoughts and feedback.
Doug

[dewey089]

Re: Resort Fee now at Plaza

You have the Tuscany numbers right. $14 plus tax, I guess that is $15.68.
And you get good value for a family night in a room.
I loved the Tuscany, but their resort fee makes it too expensive for me.
Estimates on daily cost of maintaining rooms the I've gotten were $22 a day.
I'm not disagreeing with you on the benefit to the casinos.
But all they need to do to accomplish the benefits of not paying for a third party booking is put the fee in their advertised price. They could still collect it separately and do what you suggest. They could report the right price per night in their email and advertisements and still not have to pay commission to third parties.
Well, thanks for the new idea.
I'll plug into your blog once in a while to see how that is coming along.

[azlefty]

Re: Resort Fee now at Plaza

Thanks for your interest. I need to think of more things to write about. I'm visiting LV in a few weeks so that should be some fertile ground at least for a trip report.

So many of the specials listed on LVA, etc that you can book directly on the hotel web site now come with other inclusions such as buffet, etc. I'm sure this is at least partly intended to get people to book directly rather than through a booking agency.

[dewey089]

Re: Resort Fee now at Plaza

The last I knew the Orleans and other Boyd places would pricematch. If we found a good price and called them, they'c check it on line and book. So we could get all the benefits of booking directly, but the price we found at say hotmail. Of course, then we can expect to pay the $6 resort fee, whereas finding a similar price on B Connected has meant no fee for me each time I've done it. Perhaps that was for the same reasons that you suggest.