Hotels

If there's one thing Vegas has, it's hotels. Big hotels. And lots of them. You'll find 9 of the 10 largest hotels in the United States -- 8 of the top 10 in the world -- right here. And you'll find a whole lot of rooms: 140,000 rooms, give or take, as of this writing. Every 5 minutes, or so it seems, someone is putting up a new giant hotel or adding another 1,000 rooms to an existing one. So finding a place to stay in Vegas should be the least of your worries.

Or should it?

When a convention, a fight, or some other big event is happening -- and these things are always happening -- darn near all of those 140,000 rooms are going to be sold out. (Over the course of a regular year, the occupancy rate for hotel rooms in Las Vegas runs at about 90%.) A last-minute Vegas vacation can turn into a housing nightmare. If possible, plan in advance so that you can have your choice: Ancient Egypt or Ancient Rome? New York or New Orleans? Strip or Downtown? Luxury or economy? Vegas has all that and way too much more.

The bottom line is that with a few, mostly subtle differences, a hotel room is a hotel room is a hotel room. After you factor in location, price, and whether you have an Egypt-loving kid, there isn't that much difference between rooms, except for perhaps size and the quality of their surprisingly similar furnishings.

Hotel prices in Vegas are anything but fixed, so you will notice wild price ranges. The same room can routinely go for anywhere from $60 to $250, depending on demand. So use our price categories with a grain of salt, and don't rule out a hotel just because it's listed as "Very Expensive" -- on any given day, you might get a great deal on a room in a pricey hotel. Just look online or call and ask.

Yes, if you pay more, you'll probably (but not certainly) get a "nicer" establishment and clientele to match (perhaps not so many loud drunks in the elevators). On the other hand, if a convention is in town, the drunks will be there no matter how upscale the hotel -- they'll just be wearing business suits and/or funny hats. And frankly, the big hotels, no matter how fine, have mass-produced rooms; at 3,000 rooms or more, they are the equivalent of '60s tract housing. Consequently, even in the nicest hotels, you can (and probably will) encounter plumbing noises, overhear conversations from other rooms, or be woken by the maids as they knock on the doors next to yours that don't have the DO NOT DISTURB sign up.

Coming Attractions

Part of the reason that we patiently tell people they haven't really been to Vegas, even if they have, is because if they haven't been by in the last, oh, week -- okay, let's say 2 or 3 years -- they might find several surprises awaiting them on the Strip. And if it's been more than a decade, well, forget it. All the classic old hotels are either gone (Sands, Hacienda; indeed, 2007 saw the end of the 1942 Frontier) or renovated virtually beyond recognition (Caesars, The Flamingo). In their place rise bigger and better and trendier resort hotels, changing the landscape and altering the welcome that Vegas visitors receive.

The new era of Vegas hotels was ushered in by The Mirage, and since then, everyone has been trying to up the ante. The year 1997 began with the opening of New York-New York, which set yet another level of stupendous excess that remained unmatched for, oh, at least 18 months.

The fall of 1998 saw the official beginning of the new era of Vegas luxury resorts (many with themes), with the opening of the opulent Bellagio, followed by Mandalay Bay and Four Seasons. And then these took a backseat (sort of) to The Venetian, which combines the jaw-dropping detail and extravagance of New York-New York (complete with canals and gondolas) with the luxury of Bellagio. Could anything top it? Possibly -- hot on its heels was Paris, themed as you can imagine, and just a few months later, the new and improved Aladdin, with its desert-fantasy decor.

The first half of this decade was less about new stuff and more about old stuff getting bigger and/or better. Sure, Caesars opened its Roman Coliseum replica, built just to house Céline Dion's new show, but other than that, no grand new hotels or major expansions arrived, unless you count (and we sure do) the arrival of a true luxury resort, the Ritz-Carlton, Lake Las Vegas, over in nearby Henderson. One old hotel, The Maxim, was reborn as a business-swank Westin, complete with its trademark "Heavenly Beds." The rest of the action was all about expansions: The Venetian added 1,000 rooms, a new pool, a fancy restaurant, and more in the new Venezia Tower; Mandalay Bay added more than 1,000 rooms and other goodies in a facility they call THEhotel; Bellagio joined the fray with more than 900 new rooms and a swank new spa in a new tower; and Caesars Palace added a new 700-room tower to its empire.

The year 2005 kicked off what is an unprecedented wave of development, with the arrival of Wynn Las Vegas, the latest hotel concept from Steve Wynn, the man behind Mirage Corp., at a mere cost of $2.7 billion. (As you will see, that formerly record-breaking total is peanuts compared with what's coming up.) In 2006, we saw the addition of Red Rock Resort, designed to lure tourists away from the busy Strip, and two top-to-bottom overhauls, with the creaky old San Remo going pneumatic as the Hooters Casino Hotel (no, really) and the relatively new Aladdin getting an extreme makeover to become Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino (no, really, again).

But that won't be the end of it, not hardly. 2007 saw the debut of yet another expansion to The Venetian, a 3,000-room resort and casino called Palazzo, seeking to continue the parent hotel's Italian aesthetic. 2008 brings an inaugural foray for The Donald in Vegas with Trump International, the first of two 1,200-unit condo/hotel towers going up behind what used to be the Frontier. Things really ratchet up with the 2008 birth of Wynn's second baby, Encore, a more than $1.7-billion, 2,000-room hotel and casino, complete with its own indoor pool with a retractable roof. In 2008-09, look for The Conrad Majestic, a 400-room hotel/condo project going in just north of Wynn Las Vegas, and a Hyatt hotel, part of the $2-billion casino and entertainment complex Cosmopolitan now under construction just south of Bellagio, which will also include condos. Speaking of condos . . . that seems to be the property development trend right now, so if you haven't been to Vegas in a while, and you wonder what that, and that over there, and also that really big tall tower is, it's more than likely a condo building.

But the biggest of the big new developments will come at the end of this decade, with the 2009 arrival of CityCenter, a $7.9-billion (yes, you read that right) complex of hotels, condos, casinos, shopping, and entertainment spread across 66 acres just north of Monte Carlo. Also due in 2009 is Fontainebleau, based on the famous Miami hotel and belonging to a company run by former Mandalay Resorts executives. It's a 4,000-room complex going up on the old El Rancho site across from Circus Circus.

2010 should see the opening of Echelon Place, a 63-acre, $4.4 billion multihotel development that will replace The Stardust. Other plans are in various stages of development: the Elad Group, best known for their current transformation of New York's venerable Plaza Hotel into condos, recently bought the nearly as venerable, and notably aging, New Frontier for $1.2 billion. Of course, the plan is to promptly tear it down and spend another $3.8 billion to build a Plaza Las Vegas. The latter will have 3,500 hotel rooms plus residences, shopping, and all the rest. It's unclear whether the name Plaza will carry over into replicating the New York landmark's style and form, but that seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, Harrah's, which controls a significant portion of Strip properties, was recently bought in the biggest buyout of a public corporation in history, to the tune of about $27 billion. The new owners have plans to do something with their center strip casinos that could involve completely renovating or tearing down the Imperial Palace, Bill's (former Barbary Coast), and Bally's as well as major changes to Harrah's, Flamingo, Paris, and Caesars. The Tropicana is undergoing a massive overhaul that will take years to complete, and the recently purchased Riviera will surely also see changes in the not-too-distant future. And MGM Mirage bought all the land from Circus Circus to Sahara Boulevard, a property even bigger than the one occupied by their CityCenter. Look for something huger than huge that will include a major renovation of Circus Circus. Stay tuned.