Los Angeles Times

Hotel resort fees targeted in suit

A Las Vegas casino did not clearly reveal the mandatory charge at time of booking, class-action suit says.

- By Hugo Martin

If you have ever glanced at your hotel receipt only to be stunned to see an unexpected $28 resort fee, help may be on the way.

A Studio City man has filed a class-action suit against a Las Vegas casino, contending that the resort is guilty of false and misleading advertisin­g for failing to clearly disclose a mandatory resort fee at the time that he booked the room.

The practice is not unique to Las Vegas.

Undisclose­d resort fees are such a prevalent problem that the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to 22 hotel companies in 2012, warning that their online reservatio­n sites “may violate the law by providing a deceptivel­y low estimate of what consumers can expect to pay for their hotel rooms.”

In the lawsuit, Benjamin Brin said he booked a threenight stay at the Palazzo hotel in Las Vegas in June last year. The booking website said he would pay a total rate of $209, excluding taxes and fees. Once he received his billing receipt, Brin learned that he was charged $28 a night as a “resort fee.”

“This rate is not the accurate quote of the nightly cost of the hotel per night,” the lawsuit contends. “Nowhere in the reservatio­n system page, including the price, is the resort fee specified.”

A spokesman for Las Vegas Sands Corp., the owner of the Palazzo and the Venetian casinos, declined to comment on the suit.

Brian Kabateck, an attorney for Brin, said he has heard from many hotel guests who have groused about being surprised by resort fees on their hotel receipt. “This is really an insidious practice,” he said.

Although the U.S. Department of Transporta­tion regularly imposes fines against airlines that fail to disclose the full airfare, there may be too many hotels in the U.S. for the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the disclosure law, Kabateck said.

“The U.S. has a very definite number of airlines,” he said. “When you are dealing with hotels, you have too many to track. Just consider in Las Vegas alone how many hotels you have.”

 ?? Mark Boster Los Angeles Times ?? A STUDIO CITY MAN who booked a room at the Palazzo, above in ’08, in Las Vegas has sued its owner.
Mark Boster Los Angeles Times A STUDIO CITY MAN who booked a room at the Palazzo, above in ’08, in Las Vegas has sued its owner.

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