The Best Caesars Diamond Perk: Waived Resort Fees

Generally speaking, casino perks when it comes to your tier level tend to be on the modest side. Sure, there’s discounts at shops, line cutting privileges, and so forth. In the case of some programs, like Mlife, you earn comps faster. But rarely does just having a status save you a lot of money for things you’d probably do.

Caesars Diamond level brings a few of them, such as free show tickets in Las Vegas and a $100 celebration dinner you can redeem at some point during the year. But hands down the best money-saving perk is waived resort fees when booking rooms at any Caesars destination.

Resort Fees Suck

Resort fees have become a gimmick an increasing number of hotels employ in exchange for access to “helpful” amenities like the business center, fitness center, making long distance phone calls and Internet service. The reality is they’re designed to raise the price of a hotel room without raising the cover price. Originally fees to access these amenities were optional, but the rise of the resort fee has been an effort to make these fees mandatory more often. It’s effectively a required add-on… and therefore a part of the room price, but it’s purposefully tucked aside so you don’t see the full price of the room until checkout.

In the airline industry, regulations changed to require that all-in pricing be displayed to stop confusing consumers. This hasn’t happened for hotels yet, but there are now two lawsuits targeting resort fees, with one jurisdiction suing Marriott and another suing Hilton over the practice.

While resort fees have been popping up everywhere, Las Vegas casinos were among the early adopters of such a fee. Many hate them; there’s a popular Twitter account, Kill Resort Fees, which pushes hard to surface the various complaints and issues these fees bring. Effectively they give casino operators a way to raise the price of the hotel on both comped and non-comped rooms (since operators can still charge comped rooms the fee). Over time the fees have been rising, without much to show for why they’re going up other than the hotels wish to make more money.

The Diamond Loophole

Diamond and Seven Stars card holders with Caesars Rewards get resort fees waived on all reservations. This is a particularly generous perk that most other operators don’t offer. For instance, I am Gold with mLife and only get fees waived with certain properties, all on the lower end of their spectrum.

Meanwhile, with Caesars, I’m able to avoid $35-40 a night in fees for my stays with them. If I stay with them 10 nights a year, that’s a savings of $350-400. That’s signficant – that means more money for food, or gambling, or taking in other activities. Those who gamble and visit the casino more often may save even more.

Caesars clearly benefits because I’m going to spend money on gambling and amenities on their properties while I’m there, so it’s a calculated way to encourage people to stay with them over competitors.

A lot of people are watching the announced acquisition by Eldorado Resorts to see if any major changes happen with the Caesars Rewards program, given Eldorado tends to cut promotions as part of their post-acquisition moves to conserve cash and make properties more profitable. But for now, it’s a great way to keep hotel costs in line if you have the status

Plenty of Ways to Diamond

If you have some level of status with a hotel or casino chain, and it’s middle to high in the pecking order, you’ve probably got a shot at Caesars Diamond. Caesars is running their own tier match program for casinos they have direct competition with across the country.

If you don’t have status with those, but you do with certain hotel chains, you might want to chain your tier match. Wyndham has a tier matching program with Caesars, for instance, and Wyndham also lets you tier match with other hotel chains, so you can find your way over to Caesars if you’re at the right levels with the right chains.

If you travel regularly to Vegas, or stay with Caesars properties enough, the tier match can be very helpful in saving money. Or if you gamble with them enough and earn it outright, the perks can help take the edge off the cost of reaching that tier.

Have you completed a tier match to earn Caesars Rewards Diamond, or earned it through play? Do you take advantage of the resort fee waiver? Share your thoughts in the comments!