One of the benefits of writing a published guidebook for the same destination year after year, as many Frommer's writers do, is that the constant observation of a place makes it much easier to spot sneaky changes.
Constant observation is how Pauline Frommer alerted readers to the treacherous habit among top New York City attractions, including the Empire State Building and Circle Line sightseeing cruises, to avoid quoting how much tickets cost and instead change the admission price day by day, hour by hour.
I've been finishing the upcoming 2026 guidebook to Orlando, a project I've captained for Frommer's since 2007, when you could still get into Walt Disney World for $67 rather than $209.
Comparing the situation in Orlando to 2023, it's painfully clear that hotels are trying to get away with something.
Prices always go up; of course they do. But in these cases, the increases are happening with the types of fees that won't show up when you search for prices using a hotel booking engine.
Giant increases are being imposed on charges like parking and resort fees, which, despite years of bitter protests and lawsuits from consumers, are often hidden in hard-to-find crannies of hotel websites.
Dramatic fee hikes at American hotels
A couple years ago, Drury Plaza Hotel Orlando Disney Springs stood out for granting free parking. Now it's $25 a night.
Margaritaville Resort Orlando also had free parking in 2023. Today, it's $15 a night.
Even little chain hotels are making cash grabs through the fine print. Element Orlando Universal Blvd. charged $15 for parking 2 years ago, but now the cost is $24. That's a 60% markup.
Fairfield Inn & Suites Orlando at Flamingo Crossings Town Center has bloated its parking price by 100%, doubling it from $10 in 2023 to $20 today. What's worse is that in 2021 parking there was free.
And those are just parking fees. Hotels are sneaking gotcha profits through the back door by hiking resort fees, too.
Resort fees at most of the hotels I've checked for the Orlando guidebook jumped at least 11% in 2 years—yet the inflation rate in the U.S. is just 2.7%.
In 2023, Gaylord Palms hotel had a resort fee of $38. Now it's $52. That's a 37% increase.
Despite a dramatic downturn in business (or, if you're a conspiracy theorist, to make up for it), the city of Las Vegas has been on a fee-hiking binge recently as well. In 2024, some hotels increased their resort fees twice in a year.
That's not the worst of it. There are even growing reports of hotels charging a mandatory parking fee—even if you don't have a car with you. The charge appears on your bill automatically, and if you don't dispute it, you pay it.
Who's to stop these hotels from doing these things to us? Our government has all but abandoned protecting us from this kind of thing, and what little oversight there is has been neutered.
Because parking fees can account for as much as 20% of some properties' total revenue, the temptation for hotel operators to inflate that fee to extract extra cash from guests, and then bury disclosure of the charge in tiny print on an obscure page of the hotel website, is a temptation that our current system has no interest in discouraging.
So before you book a hotel in the U.S., make sure to seek out the parking fee as well as any resort fee. Together, they can easily add as much as $100 to the room rate that you falsely thought was a good deal. And those numbers are rising much higher than prices in other sectors of your spending.
If you suspect a hotel is using secondary fees to make the true cost of a stay look much cheaper than it actually is, book somewhere else. Don't reward underhanded tactics. Believe it or not, there are still hotels that operate in an aboveboard manner and compete in the marketplace with more clarity and honesty.
Frommer's Disney World, Universal and Orlando
Preparing for an Orlando vacation can be a full-time job, and it costs a small fortune. Most other books on the market make the problem worse, burying vacationers in endless pages of pointless details unquestioningly cheering for the high-priced theme parks and resorts. But this lightweight, fact-pa...
Get the bookFrommer's Disney World, Universal and Orlando
Preparing for an Orlando vacation can be a full-time job, and it costs a small fortune. Most other books on the market make the problem worse, burying vacationers in endless pages of pointless details unquestioningly cheering for the high-priced theme parks and resorts. But this lightweight, fact-pa...