Las Vegas Vacation Blog Blog

Despite rising gasoline, airfare and hotel prices, more Americans are expected to travel for Memorial Day weekend this year, and Las Vegas is the No. 1 destination, according to some travel experts.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is predicting a 2 percent increase in visitors this year. Those 311,000 people will fill 96 percent of Las Vegas’ hotel rooms and bring a nongaming revenue of $186.2 million, the authority said.

VEGAS.com, a travel website and sister company to the Las Vegas Sun, said the average daily room rate is up 15 percent for the weekend compared with last year, to $148 a night instead of $129 a night, suggesting greater demand for rooms this year.

But the price increase doesn’t seem to be scaring people away or making them spend less on entertainment.

The travel website said visitors have been planning their weekend trips earlier this year, with the booking window, or length of time someone books a trip before arriving, up 6 percent.

And visitors have purchased 20 percent more entertainment packages this year, VEGAS.com said, indicating people are purchasing tickets before arrival instead of at the door.

The expected increase in visitors appears to outpace national trends.
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With a world full of travel options, a generous handful stand out as the most popular destinations in the world. For most vacationers, the appeal of these destinations is a no-brainer: Because they’re designed to accommodate tourism and cater to travelers’ every wish, they make for virtually foolproof vacations. Since stress is the last thing you want on vacation, going to a popular destination makes for even smoother sailing.

But because travelers are so drawn to popular places like Las Vegas, Hawaii and Mexico, prices can often skyrocket. It’s a simple matter of supply and demand, but it can put a dent in your pocket book. However, if you’re craving a getaway in one of those destinations, you can still beat the inflated prices and find a vacation that fits your budget.

Vegas - There are few travel destinations where your hotel has so much effect on your stay as in Vegas. You can choose to stay at a casino hotel or something less large-scale, depending on the experience you’re seeking. By searching for Las Vegas packages on travel sites like Travelocity.com, you can find the best deals on hotels, and at the same time add on car rental and tickets to shows like Disney’s The Lion King. Bundling items together in a package can help cut costs all around.
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Of all the places in the United States to get a glimpse into the life of the stars, perhaps no two destinations offer more than Las Vegas and Los Angeles. And given the proximity of the two, it’s completely possible - even convenient - to hit both glamorous destinations in one trip.

In fact, reliving the famous car trips made in movies such as “Swingers” and “The Hangover” can be one of the attractions of such a trip. And nothing quite compares to the surreal experience of seeing the Vegas lights emerge over the barren desert landscape.

Starting your trip from either direction is easy, as cheap flights to Las Vegas are widely available because of its popularity as a tourist destination, and deals can also be easily found on Los Angeles vacation packages. However you choose to do it, be sure to check out the following destinations along the way:

Hollywood: Check out the Hollywood Walk of Fame along Vine Street for a who’s-who of showbiz past and present while keeping your eyes peeled for stars in the flesh. If you’re lucky, you may be able to get a glimpse of stars on the red carpet heading into a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

The Sunset Strip: The strip contains rock clubs made famous in the ’70s and ’80s, including Whisky a Go Go and Roxy. Many celebrities live in the Hollywood Hills above the strip, making it a prime spot for stargazing.

Beverly Hills: Also a haven for many stars, Beverly Hills features the famed Rodeo Drive, which features some of the most exclusive shops and restaurants in the country. It presents a great opportunity for splurging if you have expensive tastes, or just for people watching if you don’t. The city also features some of the most exclusive hotels in Los Angeles, where you never know who may be passing through the doors.

The Vegas Strip: Perhaps nowhere in America is decadence more on display than on the Vegas Strip. Take in one of the many running shows given by the likes of Celine Dion or Wayne Newton. In Vegas, you’re just as likely to spot stars in the audience - or in the casinos, clubs or restaurants - as you are on stage.

Downtown Las Vegas: If you’re a fan of cinema and pop culture, you’ll recognize many iconic symbols downtown, including the waving cowboy and The Horseshoe casino. Downtown offers more of the vintage Vegas experience, as much of the new development occurs along the strip.

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Besides the Sahara Hotel & Casino, the north end of the Las Vegas Strip used to be home to the El Rancho, Wet ‘n Wild and other properties that are now defunct. Many tourists and experts now wonder what will happen to that stretch of the strip and if it can ever rebound.

When looking north on Las Vegas Blvd., you see a mix of hotels like the Riviera, Circus Circus and the Hilton Vacation. There is also a lot of vacant land and the unfinished Fontainebleau.

This section of the Strip was once the place to be. The Rat Pack, Elvis, the Beatles were all performing within blocks of each other.

“That end of the Strip is starting to become less desirable visually,” said David Crouse, a visitor who is staying at Hilton Vacation.

Where the El Rancho Vegas once stood now sits dozens of acres of empty land. MGM Resorts owns 78 acres including Circus Circus which they’d planned to built a CityCenter-like property on. And at one point in 2007, the company valued it close to $20 million an acre. Now, it’s nowhere close to that and all plans have been halted.

“That’s a long time for those companies to sit on that land,” said Jacob Oberman, a gaming analyst for CB Richard Ellis.
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Promotions and giveaways are a common thing at today’s Las Vegas casinos, yet are the free things really “free” for players?

Las Vegas has always been known as the city of generous comps, that treats gamblers to complimentary rooms, free entertaining shows, free dinners, flights, limos and just about anything else that can be imagined. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch as the old saying goes. All this comes at a high price indeed, or the casinos would have been bankrupt decades ago.

To be rated for comps at blackjack card games, players need for the pit boss to record the length of time they play, at what game and how much they bet per hand. Some games, such as poker, offer practically no comps, since players battle each other and the casino makes a small percentage of each pot played.

But if a player starts betting on blackjack card games, roulette, craps or baccarat, its easy to earn four free $20 dinners in a matter of minutes. To become eligible for free rooms and free airfare, thousands of dollars need to be rolled over before players are rated high enough to qualify. The casinos don’t care if if the player wins or loses, just as long as they are playing.

Winning at blackjack isn’t easy, and requires practice and discipline. While players enjoy all the free perks the casino has to offer, they are usually losing significantly more than the value of the comps received. Playing games with high house odds as roulette, will generate comp points faster than playing blackjack. That’s because the casino has a 500% better chance of winning each roulette spin than each blackjack hand.

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Is it possible that a major motion picture released as recently as 1995 depicting the transformation of a major American city is already woefully outdated? In the closing moments of Martin Scorsese’s Casino, we see the implosion of iconic landmarks of old Las Vegas and the debris swept aside to make way for the mega properties of the future. Goodbye Sands and the Rat Pack, hello Mirage and Siegfried & Roy. Yet by Las Vegas standards, those sparkling hotels of the early 1990s are already beginning to fossilize and feel somewhat passé. They have been eclipsed by a galaxy of chic newer properties such as Bellagio, Venetian, Wynn, Palazzo, and the ultramodern Aria and Cosmopolitan. Vegas construction is like Jennifer Love Hewitt’s dating life — a perpetual cycle of buildup, demolition, and more buildup.

I get it — Vegas is not for everyone. But for millions more, Vegas has us under some sort of hypnotic spell. Sure, the local economy has staggered in recent years, with record home foreclosures and unemployment, but Vegas tourism may finally be bouncing back. According to the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, the city’s occupancy rate in pre-recession 2007 was 90 percent, with an average hotel room costing $132. In 2010, the occupancy rate was down to 80 percent, and the average room cost plummeted to $95 — a 28 percent decrease. Combined with 16,000 newly constructed hotel rooms since 2007, these lower occupancy rates and lower room costs, and the ensuing discounts and deals, brought more than 37 million visitors to Las Vegas in 2010, a notable increase from the 2009 level.

For those who have never experienced Las Vegas revelry, or haven’t returned in years, any existing preconceptions or prejudices may be amiss as “Sin City” continues to evolve and reinvent itself. Sure, there are constants. Gaming will always be the paramount draw, and the, uh, “personal entertainment industry” continues to thrive in southern Nevada, albeit technically illegal in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County. For those seeking an affordable feast, there are myriad billboards directing you to the all-you-can-eat buffets and $5.99 prime rib.

But Las Vegas Boulevard, also known as the Strip, is now bracketed by some of the most lavish and fashionable resorts in the country. What a difference 20 years can make. Just across the street from the Mirage — built for a then-gaudy $630 million in 1990 — stands the Venetian, built a decade later for $1.5 billion. And a few doors down stands Vegas’ latest creation, the towering and sleek new Cosmopolitan, with a price tag of nearly $4 billion. Step inside, and you can see just how much Vegas has revolutionized. Celebrity chefs and Michelin stars are ubiquitous throughout these resorts, and most of the be-feathered showgirls have exited stage left, replaced by Cirque du Soleil, Broadway-quality productions of Phantom of the Opera and Lion King, and megastars such as Celine Dion and Garth Brooks.

That doesn’t mean that Vegas is verboten to anyone without an American Express black card. There are endless hotel, restaurant and entertainment options to fit almost all budgets. Vegas hotels are like the Kardashian sisters — they keep popping up, they’re always trying to one-up each other, and no one is quite sure how many of them there are. Just find the resort that is right for you. For anyone looking to maximize their Vegas visit, here are some (hopefully) helpful suggestions.
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Las Vegas may be the gambling mecca of the United States, but for those of us who would rather not spend every minute (and dollar) on a casino floor, there are other attractions in town to explore.

My sister Linda and I recently decided to spend two days in Sin City, where we did our best to not constantly feed the slot machines. We chose to stay at the Paris Las Vegas, one of my favorite hotels in town, which is roughly in the middle of the Strip.

In the mornings, I love being able to grab juice and a croissant from JJ’s Boulangerie, or at the end of the day, stop in Cafe Belle Madeleine for a taste of something sweet. Linda, who loves crepes, was disappointed that La Creperie didn’t offer a chicken crepe, but settled for a seafood one instead. All three restaurants offer reasonably priced items that can make the tab under $10 for a quick bite.

On our first day, we spent a couple of hours at one of the city’s outlet malls, Las Vegas Premium Outlets-South. There’s also a Premium Outlet-North, but we only had time to walk through one, so choose the one on the south side of the Strip.

Like most outlet malls, this one is huge, filled with tourists and locals looking for a deal from brand name stores. A merry-go-round in the center draws parents and children looking for a reason to get off their feet. While an indoor outlet makes sense in a desert setting, it’s a shame that the design here creates a dark, dense environment for visitors, rather than a light and airy one.

Of the two of us, Linda is the shopper. She can look endlessly for bargains, find great buys, and return things without hesitation if she’s dissatisfied. Walking through malls is great fun for her. I, on the other hand, only set foot inside a mall if I have something specific I need to buy. Luckily, I did need to pick up some lingerie, and Linda found a great suit jacket on sale.

That evening, we headed to The Palazzo at the northern end of the Strip to catch a performance of “Jersey Boys,” a Broadway musical so popular that the show runs 2 hours, 15 minutes — with only 10 to 15 minutes cut from the Tony-winning original — rather than being the usual 95-minute Broadway-to-Vegas condensed version.

Linda and I weren’t around when Frankie Valli began his professional singing career in 1951, rising from the blue-collar lounge circuit in New Jersey to be the frontman for The Four Seasons with a powerful falsetto voice that propelled him and the group to rock and roll stardom in the 1960s.

But we loved every minute of the musical biography that showed why Valli and his friends are such icons today. From the sweetness of “My Eyes Adored You” to the sassy “Working My Way Back to You,” the cast delivered rousing renditions, song after song, with a style that brought the audience to its feet at the end of the show.

So “Walk Like a Man” (or a woman) to the Jersey Boys Theatre at The Palazzo if you want to know what “Oh, What a Night” really means, and “Let’s Hang On” to some of the best music ever written.
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Ready to return to Vegas? You might be lured back with a special two-night “2-2-2″ package from the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino.

The package was designed to celebrating “Fan Appreciation Month” (actually during two months: May and June) and to commemorate the opening of the resort on the Vegas Strip two years ago.

The package, priced at $222, includes a two-night stay, two show tickets to Disney’s The Lion King and one gift with every package booked.

Mandalay Bay’s production of The Lion King is virtually identical to the other companies seen around the globe and is staged with all of the same spectacular music, sets and costumes that have made it a worldwide phenomenon.

This two-night offer is available for May 15-June 28 arrivals. Purchase by phone to 702-632-7580 and mention “Disney Package” or refer to code PDISN11 when booking online (https://reservations.mgmmirage.com/bookingengine.aspx?pid=MBH&host=offer&code=PDISN11).

Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino is a Four Diamond AAA resort set on 60 lush acres and features an 11-acre tropical pool with California sand, a wave pool and the only climate-controlled poolside gaming in the city.

The property also features award-winning restaurants, unique shops and the Shark Reef Aquarium — North America’s only predator-based aquarium and exhibit with more than 2,000 animals.

For more information on The Lion King and the Mandalay Bay Resort, visit www.mandalaybay.com/entertainment/disneys-the-lion-king.aspx.

Get to Las Vegas on any available day of the week for $139 each way on AirTran. A 7-day advance purchase notice is required.

Clara Bosonetto is a retired travel consultant.

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