What it means
A resort fee is the line on a Scottsdale hotel bill that is not the room and is not optional. Book a night at a big resort and the price arrives in two parts: the rate, which moves with the season, and the fee, a flat nightly charge for the amenities the property says it provides. At the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, the official page calls it a Resort Experience Fee and lists it at $55 plus tax a day as of October 2026, covering a $30 spa credit, golf shuttles, fishing poles, bikes, pickleball, EV charging and more.
Locals use the phrase as shorthand for a grievance. “The rate was great, then the resort fee” is the standard summer story, because the fee does not fall when the rates do. The summer resort playbook calls it “the resort fee that never takes a vacation,” and on a July booking at half price it can become a startling share of the total.
The fee shows up in nearly every lodging guide on this site. The where-to-stay guide and the budget guide both tell you to compare totals, and that is the whole practical lesson of the word.
Where you’ll meet it
On the final booking screen; on the folio at checkout; in the fine print of a day pass or cabana listing, where a parking charge may hide; and in every conversation about summer staycations.
Where the word came from
Nobody has documented the first hotel to call a mandatory surcharge a resort fee. What the record shows is that by 2012 the practice was widespread enough for federal attention. On November 28, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to 22 hotel operators, saying that online rates which left out mandatory fees “for amenities such as newspapers, use of onsite exercise or pool facilities, or internet access, sometimes referred to as ‘resort fees,’” might be deceptive. Those fees, the FTC noted, could run as high as $30 a night. Then-chairman Jon Leibowitz put the principle in one line: consumers are entitled to know the total cost of their hotel stays in advance.
The letters were advice, not law, and the fees kept growing and multiplying names: amenity fee, destination fee, facility fee and, in Scottsdale, the “resort experience” fee. The figure at a flagship Scottsdale resort is now nearly double the 2012 ceiling.
The law caught up in 2025. The FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees took effect on May 12, 2025, covering live-event tickets and short-term lodging, which means hotels, resorts and vacation rentals. It requires a business that advertises a price to show the total, including mandatory fees it can calculate up front, and to display that total more prominently than other pricing. The word survived the rule; the surprise mostly did not.
What it is not
A resort fee is not a tax, although it is taxed. It is not the parking charge, which at the Princess runs $28 a night for self-parking and $40 for overnight valet. And it is not a deposit or a tip pool for staff.
The fine print
The rule’s limits matter. The FTC said plainly that it does not prohibit “any type or amount of fee or specific pricing strategies.” A resort may still charge $55 or $75 a night; it simply must show that money in the price you see first. Taxes and charges for optional add-ons a guest chooses can still be left out of the headline total, so read the line items before paying.
The fee also interacts with the bed tax. Because it is billed as part of the stay, Scottsdale’s lodging taxes apply to it, and the resorts list it “plus tax.” On a three-night summer stay, $55 a night before tax is the price of a nice dinner, paid for amenities you may never use.
The resorts defend the fee as a bundle that would cost more à la carte; the Princess puts the value of its list at about $213 a day if every service were bought separately. For a guest who uses none of them, the value is zero and the charge is not. That is why the status here is contested: the word is in everyday use, and so is the argument about it. Day passes, the subject of the pool guide, are the local workaround in summer.