The Holiday Inn Express Durango Downtown-Animas River adds a mysterious fee to bookings at the property that’s made out to look like a tax. A reader shares the fee, asking what it could be?
It’s a ‘PACE’ fee, or rather they appear to participate in the ‘Property Assessed Clean Energy’ program. The way that generally works is the owners receive a subsidized loan to fund money-saving green energy projects (like replacing windows) and the loans are paid back through property taxes. The owners save money, receive subsidies, and in this case charge guests an extra fee to fund their loan repayment.
If nothing else, one way to tell that “Colorado Green Energy Fee” is made up and not a really government-mandated tax – despite describing it with the state’s name – is that the only reference Google finds to it on the internet is the last time I wrote about it.
Holiday Inn Express Durango
I similarly caught a Marriott and a Hilton adding fees onto room nights to cover their property taxes and pretending this was a government-mandated environmental charge.
This would seem to violate FTC rules. However under the current administration, “I’m not even sure that’s a crime anymore, there’ve been a lot of changes in the law.” So probably something guests should be complaining to the Colorado Attorney General about.
What’s remarkable is that I covered this Holiday Inn Express adding this back in 2022, and they’re still doing it. A reader complained about that Hilton’s PACE fee to the state attorney general and the property appears to have discontinued the practice.
Whether it’s hotels tacking on undisclosed fees for the lightbulbs in your room or franchisees charging extra to accept the chain’s own credit cards hotels get away with taking advantage of guests – but this seems worse because the property makes it appear like the government is forcing them to do it when that’s not the case at all.
It seems to me like triple dipping with corporate welfare, fraud, and fleecing guests – all rolled into one.
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