I have never had a hotel charge bullshit fees. Rental rate and tax are all I have ever paid.
Around 2004-5 I regularly stayed at a large chain hotel near Tucson airport (something like Doubletree, but I’m not sure if it was that one). They charged a daily fee for the phone in your room. Not for using it, mind you, just for the phone being there. And no, they did not have rooms without phones.
In the US it is common to have an amenities fee that you will only know, in most cases, the day of your check in. The fee applies whether you use the amenities or not.
California just passed a law banning any mandatory fee if it isn’t included in the advertised rates; the ban goes into force starting middle of next year.
The new law, which takes effect on July 1, 2024, “make[s] unlawful advertising, displaying, or offering a price for a good or service that does not include all mandatory fees or charges other than taxes or fees imposed by a government on the transaction.” If a fee is not optional and cannot be removed from a bill, the fee has to be disclosed from the top.
That being said, I would imagine that there is some wiggle room on “mandatory”. Like, a hotel is going to be allowed to charge for use of items in a minibar, for example – that’s not a mandatory fee. I don’t know what the bar is for notification that a given action will incur a fee.
Lots of hotels tack on “amenity fees” or “resort fees” separate from those. It’s pretty obnoxious, especially since they don’t show them to you til you’re halfway through booking.
