MGM Resorts Ups Resort & Parking Fees at All Vegas Properties

MGM Resorts, Las Vegas’ largest casino operator, hiked the resort and parking fees at all 12 of its Strip properties on Wednesday.

Resort fees have increased $5 per day at Aria, Bellagio, the Cosmopolitan, Vdara, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, and Delano bringing their totals to $55 per day for the first four properties and $50 per day for the latter three. They have increased $8 per day at Park MGM, Nomad, and The Signature, bringing their totals to $50 per day.

New York-New York, Luxor, and Excalibur now charge resort fees of $45 a $3 hike for New York-New York and $8 more for Luxor and Excalibur.

This was the second time this year that MGM raised its resort fees, following a hike in January.

Self-parking fees have also jumped from $18 to $20 a day at all MGM properties from Monday to Friday, and from $23 to $24 Friday through Sunday.

MGM Rewards members with pearl tier status or higher can still avoid the self-parking fees, as can all active US military, veterans, and spouses through the MGM Rewards Military Veterans Program (MVP).

Locals with a valid Nevada driver’s license can continue self-parking for free for up to three hours at all MGM Resorts properties.

Parking fees are assessed for an actual service, while resort fees only pretend to be.

Hotels claim that resort fees are a convenience fee for a host of services including Wi-Fi, gym access, and local phone calls that guests don’t like being billed separately for. (Because all travelers still use the hotel phone to make local calls.)

The real reason resort fees exist is so that hotels can raise the price of their rooms while still remaining competitive on online travel websites such as Expedia, Travelocity, and Booking.com, which collude with the hotels by not figuring resort fees into daily rates.

That way, the hotels can still top the list of results when users of these sites search for room rentals using the “best value” or “lowest price” parameters.

Resort fees, like other junk fees, are add-on charges that typically don’t appear until the end of the online booking process.

With only 39 days left of his presidency, Joe Biden says his administration continues to work to  from the travel industry.