With the containment of meetings expenditures a high priority for many organizations, planners are aggressively challenging added hotel fees and service charges."Planners are paying more attention to contracts, especially when they're on a tight budget, and they're negotiating out service charges," says Vicky Betzig, principal of Meetings Industry Consulting of Brookfield, WI, and a frequent presenter at the Affordable Meetings conferences.For example, many hotels, which typically add a 17- to 20-percent service charge for banquets, are now charging those same fees for rentals of meeting rooms and audiovisual equipment, according to Betzig.Planners can more successfully convince a hotel to reduce or eliminate those recently instituted charges than the more traditional service charges for food and beverage, she says. "If you're using the in-house AV company and the setup is basically a projector and a screen, you can probably get the charge waived," Betzig said.Resorts traditionally have charged groups a fee for porters but, on top of that, more urban hotels now also charge groups $4 to $6 per attendee, even though many attendees carry their own bags to their rooms, according to Betzig. "You can probably negotiate that charge down or out," she advises.