Hotel prices have climbed steadily since 2020, and a lot of travelers are asking the same question this year: what exactly am I paying for? Room rates keep going up, but the perks that used to justify those higher prices, free breakfast, waived fees, decent points value, have been quietly disappearing.
Between resort fee lawsuits, loyalty point devaluations, and guest satisfaction scores that keep sliding, six major chains stand out in 2026 for charging premium prices while delivering less than they used to. Here’s a closer look at each one and why travelers are starting to look elsewhere.
1. Marriott (Bonvoy)
Marriott has spent the past few years fighting lawsuits over how it prices rooms. Marriott International was sued for hiding the true price of hotel rooms from consumers and charging hidden resort fees to increase profits.[1] The allegations were blunt: “To lure consumers, Marriott advertised daily room rates lower than the true total price for a room,” then “mandatory fees were added on top of advertised rates, which allowed Marriott to increase profits without appearing to raise prices.”[2]
Those resort fees were not small either. Investigators found Marriott’s resort fees ranged from $9 to as much as $95 per room per day.[2] Legal pressure has continued into 2026, with both Hilton and Marriott under intense legal pressure regarding drip pricing, the practice of hiding mandatory resort, destination, and amenity fees until the final booking screen, even though state settlements have forced them to show all in pricing upfront.[3] On top of that, Marriott remains the only major hotel chain that charges resort fees even when you book with Bonvoy points, while Hilton and Hyatt both waive resort fees on award stays.[4]
2. Hilton (Hilton Honors)
Hilton’s loyalty program has become a moving target, and not in a good way for members trying to plan redemptions. Base points earning was cut from 10 to five points per dollar for bookings starting in early 2026, meaning base points-earning actually fell 50 percent.[5] Award pricing has been just as unpredictable.
Analysts tracking the changes note that Top-tier properties increased from 120,000 to 140,000 points per night to as much as 250,000 before a modest course correction.[6] More recently, Hilton devalued award rates at a number of properties again, with top-tier hotels remaining unchanged while some lower-tier properties were affected.[7] The pattern has become familiar enough that Reddit users have cited multiple instances of base rates increasing overnight and without warning, serving as a reminder that Hilton Honors frequently devalues points without warning.[7] One estimate puts the damage in dollar terms: a Hilton Honors point is worth about 0.45 cents, down from 0.5 cents.[8]
3. Wyndham (Vacation Ownership)
Wyndham’s timeshare arm has drawn some of the sharpest owner complaints of any hotel brand. The vacation ownership model was sold as a smarter way to vacation, a points-based system offering flexible access to a large resort portfolio without the nightly hotel rates.[9] In practice, many owners describe a very different experience.
According to owner feedback, many owners feel they got a very different product than what was promised, since booking availability is a persistent problem, maintenance fees keep rising, and visits frequently turn into pressure filled sales presentations for upgrades.[9] The math rarely favors the owner either. The comparison that keeps coming up in owner forums is telling: a straightforward all-inclusive trip to the same destination, airfare included, often costs less than the annual ownership fees alone.[9] That gap between promise and reality is exactly why this brand keeps showing up on lists of resort chains no longer worth the money.
4. World of Hyatt
Hyatt has long had a reputation as the loyalty program with the best per-point value, but 2026 tested that reputation hard. World of Hyatt overhauled its award chart in May, a pivotal moment for the program.[10] The scale of the change caught a lot of members off guard.
Even with its point still holding relatively strong value, World of Hyatt still has the most valuable point at roughly 2.5 cents CAD, despite a devaluation of up to 67 percent on its high-end hotels in May 2026.[10] Real world examples of this sting. One traveler described watching the World of Hyatt app on May 20, 2026 show Park Hyatt Maldives at 35,000 points instead of the 30,000 points hoarded for two years to redeem.[11] A 67 percent jump on flagship properties is not a minor adjustment, and it has left longtime Hyatt loyalists rethinking how much faith to put in the program going forward.
5. Red Roof Inn
On the budget end of the market, Red Roof Inn has struggled to keep pace with what guests expect for the price. Independent satisfaction data backs up the frustration. Red Roof Inn scored 533 in J.D. Power’s 2025 economy hotel guest satisfaction rankings, below the segment average of 544.[12]
The chain’s own marketing does not always match guest experience. Red Roof Inn markets itself as a comfortable and budget conscious option, but customer reviews tell a more complicated story.[12] Some of those reviews get uncomfortably specific, including one Charlotte guest who warned that “no amount of money saved is worth getting bed bugs or worse.”[12] As one review roundup put it, while not every location receives poor ratings, the volume of complaints suggests a pattern worth noting.[12] Paying a discount price is fine, but paying a discount price and still rolling the dice on cleanliness is a tougher sell.
6. IHG (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza and related brands)
IHG has managed to stay out of the biggest loyalty devaluation headlines, but that does not mean guests have been fully spared from rising costs. Fees remain a sore spot across the major chains, and IHG is no exception. Labor advocates tracking the industry noted plainly that at Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott hotels, rising costs and fees often top the list of customer complaints, and IHG properties have not been immune to the same fee pressure.[13]
Guests booking with points have run into their own frustrations, including one traveler who described being charged $500 without me knowing after booking a hotel using reward points.[14] On the loyalty side, the program has avoided the steep devaluations seen elsewhere, since IHG One Rewards continues to operate under fully dynamic pricing in 2026 with no verified broad devaluation, though the program has no published award chart and pricing remains variable with a typical range of 10,000 to 100,000 plus points per night.[15] That lack of transparency, even without a formal devaluation, makes it hard for members to know exactly what their points are worth from one booking to the next.
What ties all six of these chains together is not that they are bad hotels in some absolute sense. It is that the value equation has shifted. Prices have gone up, loyalty points buy less than they used to, and fees that were once occasional now show up as a matter of course.
Travelers who keep booking out of habit, rather than checking current reviews, fee disclosures, and redemption rates, are the ones most likely to feel shortchanged. A little extra research before booking, comparing the all-in price rather than the advertised rate, and checking recent guest feedback rather than a brand’s general reputation, goes a long way in 2026’s hotel market.
