Hotel Guests Charged ‘Energy Recovery Fee’ For Using Electricity During Their Stay
What's next? A water recovery fee? A breathing air surcharge?
Khosro | Canva Pro A new word was coined a few years ago to describe how pretty much everything we buy and engage with nowadays is becoming increasingly infuriating and predatory: It's called "ensh*ttification," a term of art for a progressive process in which a service, website or product rapidly declines in quality while increasing in cost, whether that cost is actual money or simply convenience and time.
The term was coined to describe how internet platforms slowly die by becoming unusable so we'll pay for them, but the concept is contagious—recipe websites rendered illegible by intrusive ads; everything from Amazon now being brandless garbage that breaks in a week; every service forcing you to use an app and sign up for a subscription fee if you want it to work properly. You even have to SUBSCRIBE to the features of new cars nowadays!
In short, everything — absolutely everything — is becoming a scam. And now it seems we can add hotels to the list of things jumping on the scammy "ensh*ttification" bandwagon after a traveler discovered a hotel trying to charge patrons for utilities.
A hotel guest was left shocked when their bill contained an 'energy recovery fee' for using electricity.
Perhaps this hotel is just following in the footsteps of airlines, most of which now charge you a fee to book a seat, a fee to bring a carry-on, another fee to check a bag, and often a fee to speak to someone on the phone. Nevertheless, a fee for using electricity is pretty shocking, and it left a traveler deeply angry after they noticed it on their reservation at the Holiday Inn Express in the town of Elko, Nevada.
storewanderer / FlyerTalk
As they posted to a traveler's forum, the reservation included, along with another absurd 3% "surcharge" for using a credit card, a notice that "12.95usd Erf Not Included In Rate Per Night."
"Erf" stands for "energy recovery fee" — a surcharge for the use of electricity. As a frequent traveler and a corporate travel booker for their job, the forum user was immediately suspicious. "I've redeemed hundreds of rewards nights all over with these programs and I have never had to pay a fee like this," they wrote. Right — because electricity is part of the hotel room!
The fee is not included in the final price until after customers click 'buy,' which is downright predatory.
The fee's mere existence is bad enough, but the way this location goes about it is outright mendacious. To make sure this wasn't an isolated incident, I tested it myself on the Holiday Inn Express in Elko's website and had the same experience as the traveler described in the forum.
I got a room price quote of $189.45 for two nights, along with a notice that a $12.95 fee for electricity hadn't been factored in. But this occurs on the same page where I'm asked to enter my credit card and click a button labeled "Book for $189.45" — despite the fact that that is not the price my card will actually be charged once this ludicrous electricity fee is added.
Photo by the author, obtained from the website of the Holiday Inn Express in Elko, Nevada
So, if you're not going over your reservation with a fine-toothed comb like this traveler was — because it's part of their job to book travel — you'd likely never even notice it until your credit card bill came back $12.95 higher than you agreed to.
Adding insult to injury is the aforementioned 3% credit card surcharge, which is pretty bold given that there is no other way to book a room but with a credit card, even if you go to book in person on-site.
While this fee appears to be isolated to one location, 'electricity recovery fees' are nothing new.
As a further experiment, I went through the booking process at the Holiday Inn at my local airport. Neither the ridiculous credit card fee nor the downright usurious electricity fee were included.
As Holiday Inns are often franchised, this is probably the handiwork of a local owner in Elko playing a fast one on their customers. But they may not be alone. After reviewing their records the traveler found receipts for stays at the Choice Hotels chain that included these fees as well. And a Marriott customer went viral in 2021 after they were hit with an "energy surcharge" they were told was for replacing light bulbs.
These hotels might be taking their cues from rental car companies — nearly all of them charge energy recovery fees, which Budget Car Rental describes as a fee "to help recover the escalating energy costs related to our business operations."
Translation: It's now your job, as a customer paying to rent a car, to also throw in a few bucks to keep the car rental office's lights on for some reason. This is obviously indefensibly absurd, and doubly so when it comes to a hotel, the very purpose of which is room and board.
And in the case of the Holiday Inn Express in Elko, Nevada, it's almost certainly also illegal. The fact that the website reads "Buy for $189.45" on the purchase button when that is not at all the price that will actually be charged likely constitutes a violation of federal regulations about deceptive pricing.
There's no justification for this fee in the first place, but just in case the owner of the Elko, Nevada Holiday Inn Express is reading this: I'd take that fee off your site immediately if I were you — unless you're hankering for a letter from an attorney general or two, of course.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.