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By Kevin Wilkeson, PubClub.com Travel Blogger
Once upon a time a traveler could head to Las Vegas and easly find a hotel room at a bargain price for a midweek stay as long as something big was not happening in town, such as CES, the rodeo or New Year’s Eve. Las Vegas, after all, is the ultimate supply-and-demand travel market.
Apparently, tho, that is a luxury of the past. Expecting to find several good deals, I was planning a mid-week trip to Sin City but was ground to a halt like traffic on the Strip. It used to be you could get a room for around 60 bucks but a search on several booking sites revealed prices from $200-450. And that does not include those ridiculous “resort fees” that can add $100 or more to a stay.
Check out these nightly rates for a Wedneday and Thurday stay: MGM Grand $124 ($370 total, including taxes and fees) Treasure Island $173 ($486 total), Harrah’s $242 ($639 total), Flamingo Hilton $254 ($667 total0 Wynne $305 ($782 total), the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas $343 ($880 total), the Venetian ($389, $985 total), and well, you get the idea. Even downtown hotels are $150-2oo a night and again that’s before the resort fees.
So at mimimim a traveler is looking at $500 for a mid-week stay in Vegas. Want to go on a weekend? By comparison’s sake the Flamingo Hilton – traditionally a good mid-tiered place to stay because it’s in the middle of the Strip across from Caesars Palace – is $374 a night and $939 total for a Friday and Saturday night stay. (All prices are for the last week of October, the week before and weekend heading into Halloween, which is on a Tuesday in 2023 and two weeks before the Fomula 1 race in Las Vegas).
And this is Vegas, baby! Which means you don’t exactly spend a lot of time in that expensive room. You’re out doing the things one does in Vegas. The room is just that – a place to put your head on the pillow and take a shower, basically.
Plus, at many places, you have to constantly be playing the games in order to get comped drinks. Las Vegas is a great and fun place but at these prices, you had better carefully pick when you go now as opposed to saying to a friend while tossing back a few in a bar, “hey. let’s go to Vegas!”
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