Florida Resort Fees: What They Cost, and Who Charges Nothing

By SuddenStay Editorial · August 20, 2026

Photo: Waters2100 (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons

A resort fee is a mandatory nightly charge that does not appear in the rate you searched on. You cannot decline it, it applies whether or not you touch the wifi or the beach chairs it supposedly covers, and it is usually collected at the property rather than at checkout. Across the Florida hotels we track it runs from about $20 a night at the low end to $75 at the top, and parking is charged separately on top of it. Here is where the money actually goes, and which hotels skip the fee altogether.

What the fee runs, and what it buys

The top of the range sits with the big Orlando convention and resort properties. Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld charges around $48 a night plus tax, Gaylord Palms about $45, and the Walt Disney World Dolphin $50. On the Gulf beaches the numbers are lower but the pattern is the same: Wyndham Grand Clearwater Beach and Hilton Clearwater Beach both charge $35 a night plus tax. Hilton bills beach chairs on top. The Wyndham Grand used to publish that its fee covered them and now publishes no inclusion list at all, so as of September 2026 we cannot tell you what the same $35 buys there. Worth asking at booking, because two identical fees can differ by $40 a day once a family rents four loungers. The most expensive fee on the Gulf is at RumFish Beach Resort, at $55, though it is charged per unit rather than per person.

Parking is a second fee, and on the Gulf, Clearwater is the worst of it

Budget the parking as a separate line, because at this tier it rivals the resort fee. The four big Clearwater Beach resorts share a specific trap: Sandpearl, Opal Sands, Wyndham Grand and Hilton Clearwater are all valet only at roughly $40 a day, with no self-park option to fall back on. Orlando is no gentler. Renaissance runs $44 a night to self-park and $56 for valet, which stacks with its $48 fee to roughly $92 a night before you have paid for the room itself. Gaylord Palms lands near $85 on the same math.

Miami charges the most in the state, and the beach hides the number

Miami sets the ceiling. The Miami Beach EDITION shows a $75 resort fee on Marriott's booking screen. The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach charges $70 a night, which it now publishes on its own resort-fee page rather than burying in the booking engine as it did when we first checked. Faena is $65 plus 14% tax, which is $74.10 by the time it lands on the folio. Fontainebleau is $53 plus tax per room per day, and now calls it a Hotel Fee. Read that plus-tax wording carefully: $53 plus 14% is $60.42, so the drop from $59 is not the saving it looks like. If you have read that the fee is purely a beach problem and that downtown and Brickell skip it, do not book on that. Nearly every Miami hotel we track charges something. Downtown, The Elser is among the priciest at $59. Four Seasons Miami charges one too, but as of September 2026 publishes no amount anywhere on its own site, so we will not quote a figure we cannot source. EAST Miami bills $54, and Kimpton EPIC $40.

What does change by neighbourhood is how much you can learn before you arrive, and whether you can park yourself. Five of the fourteen Mid-Beach hotels we track charge a fee and publish no amount for it anywhere: Eden Roc, Nobu, Hotel Riu Plaza and Grand Beach among them. You meet the figure in the booking flow or at checkout. Parking is the other half of it. Eighteen of the 24 beach hotels we track give you nothing but valet, against seven of twelve downtown, and the sixteen that publish a rate run $45 to $73 a night for a standard car. Stack both at Faena and you are near $142 a night, $74.10 of fee on top of $68 of valet, before you have paid for the room.

Two Miami hotels charge no resort fee, and they are worth knowing by name. The Setai is the one that surprises people, because it sits at the top of the South Beach market and still charges none. Its FAQ says so plainly. The catch is the car: valet is $60 a night and the hotel publishes no self-park option. Downtown, Dua Miami came through the live booking flow as room rate plus government taxes and nothing further, though valet is $61 with no self-parking. We used to list Miami Marriott Biscayne Bay here as a third, and as the only one that lets you park yourself. Re-checked in September 2026 that is wrong: Marriott's booking engine adds a $35 destination fee to every room type, and it appears nowhere on the property page. If you chose that hotel on our word to avoid a fee, we got it wrong. At the low end of the fee scale, Casa Faena is $28 plus 14% tax and Hotel Croydon is $30 plus 14%, both on Mid-Beach. Croydon's catch is that it operates no lot and no valet at all, so you are on ParkMobile meters or a public garage a few hundred feet away, and it publishes no rate for either.

The hotels that charge no resort fee

This is the part most fee roundups leave out. Plenty of good Florida hotels charge nothing. On the Gulf beaches, Sabal Palms Inn, Page Terrace and Barefoot Bay all skip it, and most of them park you free as well. In Orlando, Drury Plaza Hotel at Disney Springs charges no resort fee and throws in hot breakfast and evening drinks, though its gated parking is $28 a night with no free option. The pattern is consistent: the fee is a feature of large branded resorts, and the small independents on the same sand mostly do without it. Coconut Inn and several of its neighbours on St. Pete Beach charge no fee and park you free on site.

The Disney exception, and why it is not a free pass

Disney-owned resorts do not charge a resort fee at all, which surprises people who assume the priciest hotels charge the most extras. Disney's Grand Floridian and its sister deluxe resorts carry none. Overnight self-parking is complimentary for Disney Resort hotel guests, so what they actually charge is valet, at $42 a night plus tax, and some add a per-adult charge past the second guest in a room. Meanwhile the Marriott-run Swan and Dolphin sit on Disney property but behave like ordinary convention hotels, with a $50 nightly fee and paid self-parking, which is the single most common billing surprise on that campus.

How to check before you book

Three habits cover almost all of it. Add the resort fee and the parking to the nightly rate before you compare two hotels, because a $30 gap in headline price routinely reverses once both stacks are counted. Ask what the fee actually includes, specifically whether beach chairs and wifi are in or out. And confirm the current number with the property, since fees drift upward and any figure published anywhere, including the ones on our hotel pages, is only as good as its last check. Every hotel page we publish lists the fee and the parking cost in its quick facts, so you can run that math before you tap through to a live rate.