Three Questions to Ask Before You Book a Room

Where should I stay?

Your two main choices for location are the Strip and Downtown. The Strip, home to many of the most dazzling hotels and casinos in Vegas, is undeniably the winner -- especially for first-timers -- if only because of the sheer, overwhelming force of its "Vegas-ness." On the other hand, it is expensive, crowded, confining, and strangely claustrophobic. We say "strangely claustrophobic" because the hotels only look close together: In reality, they are situated on large properties, and it's a long (and often very hot or very cold) walk from one place to the next.

Contrast that with Downtown, which is nowhere near as striking but is more easily navigated on foot. Within 5 minutes, you can reach more than a dozen different casinos. The Fremont Street upgrade has turned a declining area into a very pleasant place to be, and the crowds reflect that: They seem nicer and more relaxed, and a calmer atmosphere pervades. Hotels certainly aren't state-of-the-art down there, but the rooms at many are not just clean and acceptable but rather pleasant. The establishments' smaller sizes often mean friendlier, faster service than at the big 'uns uptown, and you often can't beat the rates. There are also several other development plans afoot that might add even more aesthetic and entertainment appeal to the area. Since it's only a 5-minute ride by car between Downtown and Strip hotels (the Convention Center is more or less in between), there's no such thing as a bad location if you have access to a car.

For those of you without a car and who don't want to spend the $10 to $15 on a cab ride between Downtown and the Strip: Although the bus ride between Downtown and the Strip is short in distance, it can be long in time if you get stuck in traffic. You should also be aware that the buses become quite crowded once they reach the Strip and may bypass a bus stop if no one signals to get out and the driver does not want to take on more passengers. Without a car, your ease of movement between different areas of town is limited.

Frankly, for first-timers, there probably isn't any point to staying anywhere but the Strip -- you're going to spend most (if not all) of your time there anyway. For future visits, however, we'd strongly advise you to consider Downtown.

But the Strip vs. Downtown location isn't the end of the debate; there is also the issue of where to stay on the Strip. Staying on the South Strip end means an easy trip (sometimes in the air-conditioned comfort of covered walkways or monorail) to Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, New York-New York, Tropicana, Luxor, and Excalibur -- all virtually on one corner. Mid-Strip has Caesars, The Mirage, Bellagio, TI-Treasure Island, Paris, The Venetian, Bally's, The Flamingo, Harrah's, and so forth. The North Strip gets you Wynn Las Vegas, The Riviera, Sahara, Stardust, and Circus Circus, though with a bit more of a walk between them. For this reason, if mobility is a problem and you want to see more than just your own hotel casino, the South and Mid-Strip locations are probably the best bets.

Reservations Services -- The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority runs a room-reservations hotline (tel. 877/VISIT-LV or 702/892-0711; www.visitlasvegas.com) that can be helpful. They can apprise you of room availability, quote rates, contact a hotel for you, and tell you when major conventions will be in town.

A couple words of warning: Make sure they don't try to book you into a hotel you've never heard of. Try to stick with the hotels listed in this guide. Always get your information in writing and then make some phone calls just to confirm that you really have the reservations that they say they've made for you.

Surfing for Hotels -- In addition to the online travel booking sites Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, and Hotwire, you can book hotels through Hotels.com; Quikbook (www.quikbook.com); and Travelaxe (www.travelaxe.net). HotelChatter.com is a daily webzine offering smart coverage and critiques of hotels worldwide. Go to TripAdvisor.com or HotelShark.com for helpful independent consumer reviews of hotels and resort properties.

It's a good idea to get a confirmation number and make a printout of any online booking transaction.

What am I looking for in a Hotel?

If gambling is not your priority, what are you doing in Vegas? Just kidding. But not 100% kidding. Vegas's current identity as a luxury, and very adult, resort destination means there are several hotels that promise to offer you all sorts of alternatives to gambling -- lush pool areas, fabulous spas, incredible restaurants, lavish shopping. But if you look closely, much of this is Vegas bait and switch; the pools are often chilly (and often partially closed during nonsummer months), and it will be years before there is more foliage than concrete in these newly landscaped environments. The spas cost extra (sometimes a whole lot extra), the best restaurants are rarely cheap, and the stores are often the kinds of places where average mortals can't even afford the oxygen. So what does that leave you with? Why, that's right -- gambling.

The other problem with these self-proclaimed luxury hotels is their size. True luxury hotels do not have 3,000 rooms -- they have a couple of hundred, at best, because you simply can't provide first-class service and Egyptian-cotton sheets in mass quantity. But while Wynn, Bellagio, The Venetian, and, to a lesser extent, Mandalay Bay have done their best to offer sterling service and to make their rooms more attractive and luxurious than those at other Vegas hotels, there's only so much that any place that big can do. Don't get us wrong -- these places are absolutely several steps up in quality from other large hotels, and compared to them, even the better older hotels really look shabby. But they are still sprawling, frequently noisy complexes.

Having said that, there is a new trend in Vegas; many of the big hotels have put up new towers or additions that function as virtually separate hotels. This began with the Four Seasons, which occupies the top floors of Mandalay Bay and has its own separate entrance. Mandalay Bay has added the sterling THEhotel, while The Venetian and Bellagio have separate towers. (The Venetian will have also opened Palazzo along these lines by the time you read this.) Each has its own check-in area and functions like a separate hotel entity. You gain some quiet (there are no casinos in these venues); in the case of THEhotel, considerable style; and, overall, at least the illusion of better service (and probably some reality of it, too, since there are fewer rooms under the special monikers). Classier grown-ups, or well-heeled families, should make these new additions first on their list.

Sadly, it's relatively easy for both you and us to make a mistake about a hotel; either of us may experience a particular room or two in a 1,000-plus-room hotel and from there conclude that a place is nicer than it is or more of a dump than it is. Maintenance, even in the best of hotels, can sometimes be running a bit behind, so if there is something wrong with your room, don't hesitate to ask for another. Of course, if it's one of those busy weekends, there may not be another room to be had, but at least this way you've registered a complaint, perhaps letting a busy hotel know that a certain room needs attention. And who knows? If you are gracious and persistent enough, you may be rewarded with a deal for some future stay.

If you want a true luxury-resort hotel, there are only two options: On the Strip it's the Four Seasons, and off, way off, in nearby Henderson, it's the Ritz-Carlton. In addition to that same service and level of comfort only found at a smaller hotel, both offer those extra goodies that pile on the hidden charges at other hotels -- health club, poolside cabanas, and so on -- as part of the total package, meaning that their slightly higher prices may be more of a bargain than you'd think. Actually, there's now a third option: The new Red Rock Resort is attracting well-heeled and high-profile tabloid types, who, presumably, know luxury. However, Red Rock charges for all the extras you get as a regular part of your stay at the Four Seasons and the Ritz.

Still, if you want peace and quiet and don't land in the tax bracket that Four Seasons/Ritz caters to, there are other, less high-profile hotels without casinos. (And there is also the option of staying in the casino-free Venezia, Palazzo, or THEhotel at Mandalay Bay, all of which charge higher prices than their home base but might be running affordable specials.) Make certain the hotel has a pool, however, especially if you need some recreation. There is nothing as boring as a non-casino, non-pool Vegas hotel -- particularly if you have kids.

Casino hotels, by the way, are not always a nice place for children. It used to be that the casino was a separate section in the hotel, and children were not allowed inside (we have fond memories of standing just outside the casino line, watching our dads put quarters in a slot machine "for us"). But in almost all the new hotels, you have to walk through the casino to get anywhere -- the lobby, the restaurants, the outside world. This makes sense from the hotel's point of view; it gives you many opportunities to stop and drop $1 or $10 into a slot. But this often long, crowded trek gets wearying for adults -- and it's far worse for kids. The rule is that kids can walk through the casinos, but they can't stop, even to gawk for a second at someone hitting a jackpot nearby. The casino officials who will immediately hustle the child away are just doing their job, but, boy, it's annoying.

So, take this (and what a hotel offers that kids might like) into consideration when booking a room. Again, please note that those gorgeous hotel pools are often cold (and again, sometimes closed altogether) and not very deep. They look like places you would want to linger, but often (from a kid's point of view) they are not. Plus, the pools close early. Hotels want you inside gambling, not outside swimming.

Ultimately, though, if it's a busy time, you'll have to nab any room you can, especially if you get a price you like. How much time are you going to spend in the room anyway?

Who Kept the Kids Out? -- Some hotels -- notably Bellagio, which started the practice, and Wynn Las Vegas -- ban children who are not staying on-site from stepping foot on the hotel premises and ban strollers even if you are staying there. Child-free adults love the bans, but families who travel to Vegas (can we say yet again that this is not a family destination?) may be seriously inconvenienced by it. The policy doesn't appear to be uniformly enforced (hotels don't want to offend parents who have plenty of dough to gamble, after all), but we've seen families and teenagers get turned away from a hotel because they couldn't produce a room key. If you're traveling with your kids, or want to be free of someone else's, your best bet is to call your chosen hotel and ask what its policy is.

What will I have to pay?

The rack rate is the maximum rate that a hotel charges for a room. It's the rate you'd get if you walked in off the street and asked for a room for the night. Hardly anybody pays these prices, however, especially in Vegas, where prices fluctuate wildly with demand and there are many ways around rack rates. Here are some tips for landing a low rate.

Investigate reservations services. These outfits usually work as consolidators, buying up or reserving rooms in bulk and then dealing them out to customers at a profit. Most of them offer online reservations services as well.

As far as prices go, keep in mind that our price categories are rough guidelines, at best. If you see a hotel that appeals to you, even if it seems out of your price range, give them a call anyway. They might be having a special, a slow week, or some kind of promotion, or they may just like the sound of your voice (we have no other explanation for it). You could end up with a hotel in the "expensive" category offering you a room for $35 a night. It's a toll-free call, so it's worth a try.

Consider also, even if you think from the outset that this is your one and only trip to Vegas, joining a hotel's players' club -- or possibly every hotel's players' club. This costs you nothing, and players/members often get nifty offers in the mail for heavily discounted, and occasionally even free, rooms (plus meals, shows, and so on). Players' clubs reward you with freebies and discounts when you play in their casinos, regardless of whether you win. Even as one luxury hotel was firmly insisting their prices would never, ever fall below about $149 per night, players' club members were receiving invitations to stay for $89. How much you have to play to get these deals varies, but if you are going to gamble anyway, why not make it work more to your advantage? You can sign up online, which will get you e-mail only offers. You can do this on almost every hotel's website, and it's worth it, though it does mean scheduling your Vegas vacation to take advantage of the times the offers are valid.

We've classified all our hotel recommendations based on the average rack rate that you can expect to be quoted for a double room on an average night (not when the Consumer Electronics Show is in town, and not on New Year's Eve). Expect to pay a little less than this if you stay only Sunday to Thursday, and a little more than this if you stay Friday and Saturday.

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Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.

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				Frommer's Las Vegas 2008 Author: Mary Herczog Pub Date: November 05, 2007 Price: $17.99				Related Titles: Arizona For Dummies, 4th Edition Frommer's American Southwest, 3rd Edition Frommer's Arizona 2008