Why our price is higher than the rate you saw: taxes and resort fees

The most common email I get is some version of “the hotel’s own site says $450 and you say $520.” Both numbers are right. The hotel is quoting the room rate and I am quoting what you will pay, and in most of the United States those are 12% to 19% apart before anyone mentions a resort fee. This site shows the second number on purpose, because it is the one that decides whether the stay is a deal.

This piece is the arithmetic, with the actual rates I use, so you can check the work.

Two kinds of country

Countries split into two habits. The United States, the Gulf states and Canada quote a room rate and then add a percentage on top: state and local lodging taxes, sometimes a tourism district levy. Most of Europe, the UK, Japan and Australia do the opposite. The VAT is already inside the displayed rate, and what gets added is a flat per-person, per-night city tax that is small relative to a luxury room.

So the all-in formula I use is: base rate, times one plus the percentage rate for that place, plus the flat per-night tax converted to dollars, plus the hotel’s resort or destination fee if it charges one. For a London hotel that is base rate plus nothing, because VAT is in the rate and England has no tourist tax. For a New York hotel it is base rate times 1.1475, plus a $1.50 nightly unit fee.

The percentage places

The rates in my table for the big American markets, as of 2026: New York City 14.75% plus $1.50 a night. Chicago 17.5%, and 19% downtown from May 2026 after a new tourism district was added. Washington, DC 15.95%, a temporary rate that runs through September 2027 on top of a 14.95% base. Honolulu about 18.5%, which is the state transient tax, a county surcharge and the general excise tax stacked. Boston 14.95%. San Francisco and Los Angeles 14%, before their business-district add-ons. Las Vegas and the rest of Clark County 13.38%. Georgia adds a flat $5 a night on top of roughly 15%.

Outside the US, Dubai charges a 7% municipality fee plus a Tourism Dirham of AED 20 a room a night at five-star hotels. Toronto stacks HST and a municipal accommodation tax to roughly 19.8%. Where I have no city-specific figure I use a state or country typical rate, and the site flags a price whose tax basis hasn’t been verified by leaving it out of the deal badge.

The flat-fee places

Paris charges a taxe de séjour of €11.70 per person per night at five-star hotels, including the Grand Paris surcharge, so €23.40 a night for two. Rome is €10 per person at five-star, €20 for two, on its 2026 schedule. Barcelona went to €12 per person for five-star from April 2026, the Catalan levy and the city levy combined, so €24 a night for a couple. Lisbon is €4 a person. Madrid charges nothing. Tokyo’s accommodation tax is ¥200 per person on rooms over ¥15,000, which at luxury rates is a rounding error. Edinburgh introduced a 5% visitor levy on July 24, 2026, charged on the pre-VAT rate and capped at five nights, the first of its kind in the UK.

These numbers are per person, and the site assumes two adults, which is the same assumption the booking links make. A solo traveller pays half the city tax and the site is a few euros high for them.

Resort fees

Resort fees, destination fees, facility fees, amenity fees: different names for a flat nightly charge the hotel adds regardless of the rate. They are an American habit and a Las Vegas specialty, where the big Strip properties commonly charge $40 to $60 a night on top of the room, and the room is often priced low to compensate. The site captures each hotel’s fee once, as a flat amount, and adds it to every night. A hotel with no fee gets nothing added.

The capture is empirical rather than taken on trust from the fee’s label. Across a few sample nights with different room rates, a line whose dollar amount stays constant is a flat fee, and one whose amount tracks the rate is a percentage tax. That check catches the occasional “tax” that is really a fixed charge, and vice versa. It also means a hotel that introduces a resort fee mid-year won’t show it until its constants are re-captured, which is one of the things that can make a price here run low.

Three worked examples

A $500 room rate in New York: $500 × 1.1475 = $573.75, plus $1.50, so $575.25 a night. The site shows $575.

A $500 room rate at a Las Vegas resort with a $50 fee: $500 × 1.1338 = $566.90, plus $50, so $616.90. Note the fee itself is often taxed too, and the site applies the percentage to the base rate only, so the true bill can run a few dollars over.

A €500 rate in Paris: the VAT is already in it, so add €23.40 of city tax for two and convert. In London the same €500-equivalent rate is the final price. That difference is why a London five-star at a $747 median all-in night on The Edit is a better deal against its sticker than a New York one at $977, and why comparing sticker rates across the Atlantic misleads.

What this doesn’t include

Parking, which in a city can be $75 a night and is not a tax. Gratuities. Breakfast, unless the program includes it, which is the point of the programs. And the credit card’s own foreign transaction fee, which every card on this site waives anyway.

It also doesn’t include the portal’s pricing decisions. Chase Travel, Amex Travel and the others show their own all-in totals, and the tax lines there can differ from mine by a few dollars because they compute on their own rate. The point of this page is that the shape of the number here, base plus tax plus fee, is the same shape the portal will show, so the two are comparable in a way that the hotel’s billboard rate never was.