I felt like the luckiest guy in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago when I checked into the Tropicana Resort hotel. I’d gotten a cheap rate at a time when most other Strip hotels were charging two or three times as much.

But I soon found a potential trap that could have made my stay a lot more expensive. The front-desk clerk warned me long-distance telephone charges were $14.40 for the first minute, $1 a minute thereafter.

Wow. I had my cell phone, but what if reception was lousy? What if I’d forgotten my power cord? Three brief long-distance calls and my phone bill would have exceeded the cost of the room.

This discovery underscores a problem with hotels. It isn’t just outrageous taxes and fees that drive up the cost of a room; it’s the surcharges and extras, as well. Overnight parking charges. Resort fees. Bottles of water from the minibar that cost $4. The list goes on and on.

The Tropicana turned out to be far from the worst in the surcharge department. At the Trop, like all Strip hotels, self-parking is free. But you won’t find that across the country. If you decide to leave a car parked at the Hilton New York, the cost is as much as I paid for my room in Las Vegas: $40 a night.

And in terms of outrageous phone charges, the Trop doesn’t come close to the Hilton Checkers in downtown Los Angeles. There, guests have to pay a $4.99 flat fee for a long-distance call, up to $10 charges per minute plus a 20% markup on whatever the phone company charges. Whew. A half-hour call could cost as much as $305.

Suddenly, the $229-a-night charge for the room seems cheap by comparison. I called the general manager of the Hilton Checkers for comment, but I didn’t hear back from him.

A leading hotel industry consultant, Mark Woodworth of PKF Consulting, says the industry installed a lot of expensive telecommunications equipment over the years, only to be undercut by guests carrying cell phones. They charge high rates in order to try to recoup some of their investment.

And, of course, there’s more pressure than ever on hotels to keep basic rates low so they can trounce competitors on Internet travel sites. Then they try to add on fees when the guests visit.

Woodworth says not only is he getting used to seeing $10 resort fees tacked on his bill — whether he uses the pool or not — but recently ran into a daily $3 «housekeeping fee» at a Phoenix hotel. «What comes next?» he asks. «A couple bucks for the sheets?»

Nevertheless, travelers can take some steps to save money:

Buy a phone card. Some hotel clerks advised me to pick up a phone card instead of using the room phone. That way, all the long-distance calls show up on the bill as local calls because they are dialed through a toll-free number. Sam’s Club online, for instance, offers a 20-pack of AT&T 100-minute prepaid phone cards for $69.42, which works out to about 3 cents per minute.

Ask about special programs. ByRequest, Wyndham Hotels’ frequent-guest program, includes free local and long-distance calls and free Internet access. The program doesn’t cost anything to join. Guests can sign up when they check in.

Consider flat-rate deals. Marriott offers unlimited local and long-distance calling for $9.95 a day at many of its full-service hotels. Westin has a similar program for $16.

Don’t bring your car. In Boston and New York, the two cities where I found the highest parking rates, a car is more of a hindrance than a help because the taxi and public transportation network is so good.

Besides, if you have a car, you shouldn’t be staying downtown anyway. You can get a hotel room on the outskirts of the city and drive to appointments within a few minutes. And in doing so, you’ll probably save enough on the cost of the hotel to pay for the car.

In Denver, for example, the Marriott City Center Hotel was listed at $199 a night for each of the two nights that I checked for a trip next month. Overnight parking is $23. Meanwhile, Marriott’s TownePlace Suites is about a mile from downtown, the room rate was half as much and the parking is free.

Free. When it comes to hotels, I wish I would see that word more often.