Frommer's Las Vegas 2004

Where to Stay
5
If there’s one thing Vegas has, it’s
hotels. Big hotels. And lots of them.
You’ll find the 10 largest hotels in the
United States—9 of the top 10 in the
world—right here. And you’ll find a
whole lot of rooms: 132,000 rooms,
to be exact—or at least exact 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 132,000
rooms are going to be sold out. (Over
the course of a regular year—one not
affected by the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks—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 a pirate-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, and even that
range is negotiable if it’s a slow time
(though such times are less and less
common thanks to the influx of conventions).
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 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 get woken by the
maids as they knock on the doors next
to yours that don’t have the DO NOT
DISTURB sign up.
1 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,