Four great observations.

Yes, the facility fees can be rather complicated. Often small conferences want to use a lot of space for the sessions and exhibits yet they don’t see enough sleeping rooms to get all of that space free. So when they do have to pay for the additional space, they try to include it in the attendee’s fee. The challenge is that many associaitions look at their conferences and events a their largest non-dues revenue source so if they don’t raise the registration fee to accomodate for more fees, their overall revenue drops. Rarely do you find an organization that uses zero based budgeting with the registration fee covering all expenses involved.