Hidden fees are erupting throughout hotel and cruise industry

You check out of a downtown hotel, and your bill contains a "resort fee" of $20 a day for a fitness room you never entered, a pool towel that remained untouched and a coffeemaker you never used. Hidden fees are erupting throughout the lodgings industry, and it's important to stand up and challenge the deceptive practice.

All within the past two weeks, I've received messages from readers who recount the following outrages:

* At the Franklin Hotel in New York, a reader finds a fee of $12 a day on his final bill. He's told, upon inquiring, that it's for WiFi (wireless access to the Internet, which he never used). "Everyone charges that," says the hotel clerk.

* Two readers book a European river cruise from Grand Circle Tours, pay the bill, and then receive a supplemental bill charging them an additional $65 because the euro had gone up in value. "Would you have given me a reduction if the euro had gone down?" he argues unsuccessfully. 

* A reader comes home from a cruise on the Coral Princess and finds that he has been billed a 15 percent service charge on every glass of wine he had ordered. 

* At the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City, a reader discovers he has been charged for an unreturned pool towel for which he had a return receipt, and for a soup he had never ordered. 

* A passenger on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship, heavily marketed as offering "free-style dining" (i.e., specialty restaurants as an alternative to the main restaurant), finds he has been billed a $15-$20 cover charge for every meal taken at those alternate restaurants, whose menus carried no prices and for which there was no charge disclosed in advance.....