Amenity fee

toedtoes wrote:
There are two ways to look at this:

1. The park charges a flat nightly rate including the cost of amenities, etc.
2. The park charges a lower flat nightly rate and then charges a separate fee for amenities.

The benefit of #1 is that the park doesn't get questioned about the charge for the amenities by customers. The benefit of #2 is that they can publish a lower nightly rate in directories, etc., bringing in more customers. If a customer complains, they can "comp" them the amenities fee and get credit for their "good will" - but the majority of folks will pay and not say anything.

My personal opinion is that #2 is slightly underhanded and rewards the complainers. I get real tired of the "reward the complainers and unreasonable folks and screw over the folks who don't cause any trouble" practice of businesses. I would rather be charged more per night, the same as everyone else in the place, than deal with a company whose practice is to overcharge the customer unless they complain.

I think this pretty much covers it, with a couple of added notes. Some franchise parks have to pay a steep franchise fee on site rentals and nothing on the add on fees, so it might be very beneficial to those parks to charge say $40.00 for the site and a $10.00 "amenity fee" as opposed to charging $50.00 for the site. That could save a medium sized park $10,000 in royalties over a year, not insubstantial. Also, lodging taxes are charged on site fees in many states and not of the amenity fee, so you as a customer could be saving a couple of bucks with the amenity fee structure.
Finally, while obviously not the case with the park in question, since they don't have the pool up and running or many of the facilities active, sometimes the criticism of an amenity fee being charged on an amenity that is not available might be a bit overblown. If a single amenity out of 10 or 20 is temporarily out of service, it really isn't fair to point it out and say you were charged the total fee and there were no ping pong balls for the ping pong table. Personally, I much prefer the one fee and that includes it all model. There is less conflict, in my opinion.