Whatever Happened To Those Cheap Las Vegas Midweek Hotel Rooms?

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!”