“Checked into the hotel, checked out of reality.”
-unknown
Have you ever seen a commercial pertaining to a particular subject matter that you happened to be exponentially familiar with, only to erupt in outrage and disgust as the commercial made this, varying in ways, much more complicated and intricate that the commercial was portraying it to be? Like a dramatic scene from some cable TV medical drama where a complicated brain surgery is taking place and the head honcho doctor (of course being played by the show’s main actor) executes the surgery quickly, with little extraneous events or details complicating things which, then, fast forwards to telling the family that the patient is out of surgery and doing fine when you know that in real life, there were a million smaller little parts that go along with that kind of situation. And then the result is you just being annoyed that they made it look so easy with no complications and the patient and family live happily ever after and you’re just sitting on your sofa rolling your eyes so hard that it’s audible as you exclaim “that’s bullshit. Everybody knows it’s way more complicated.”
Such is my experience seeing any of the myriad of commercials advertising hotel rooms and any associated experiences you can have when you come to visit Las Vegas. The most recent ones (at least to my memory) were the commercials I saw for The Cosmopolitan. Don’t get me wrong, The Cosmo is probably my absolute favorite property on the entire Las Vegas Strip – and, keep in mind, I’m 39 and my family and I moved here when I was only 9. I’ve seen my fair share of properties and hotel/casinos all across the city. But despite Cosmo (now that I think of it, every property that comprises City Center) being my favorite property, I still harbor the same jaded frustration and annoyance with all the commercials showing the fun part of staying in a Las Vegas hotel and not what it takes to actually get booked for a room on the Las Vegas Strip. More importantly, the financial resources (aka, money) that it takes to be able to stay in a hotel room like The Cosmo’s rooms (which, if you haven’t experienced one yet, let this article be your wake up call to do so and rectify this immediately).
Keeping this in mind, I did some digging as to what one might encounter when trying to book a hotel room in Las Vegas so you, dear reader, will have a better concept of what you need to bring to the table in the first phase of your Las Vegas trip: booking your hotel room.
I want to, first, lay a ground work concept for you before I go into pricing specifics and the platform/apps that came up in my search. Fact number one to be aware of when deciding what dates to visit Las Vegas and where you’re going to stay: hotel rooms are notoriously and outlandishly cheaper during the week than they are during the weekends. This is because Fridays and Saturdays are the hotels’ big money days as most tourists are coming here over a weekend and all at once. With that much competition from unsuspecting vacationers due to the sheer volume of people that flood the city with their Vegas Vacation-ness, they’re basically able to jack up the price so that the highest bidder will end up being the one who gets the room. But this room, if you were to do some research and price-shopping, can be found with all the same features, amenities, and service features during the regular days of the week at usually a fraction of the cost of the same room during aforementioned weekend days. You still with me? Okay great, because here’s what I discovered on my little fact-finding and checking mission:
The date I selected as my hypothetical booking date was Thursday January 30, 2025 and I used this date across the four most relevant apps/websites that popped up in my search results (aka, the were the top returned results when I went to compare). So for this little R&D session, I compared our hypothetical date on HotelTonight, Expedia, Kayak, and TripAdvisor.com. Here’s what I found:
- HotelTonight: The two best priced rooms on this one was at 4 Queens for $39 and Virgin Hotels Las Vegas for $38
- Expedia: We had much better luck as far as selection goes. Here we had Luxor Hotel & Casino for $32, Planet Hollywood for $29, Flamingo Las Vegas for $23, Linq Hotel & Experience for $23 and The Strat for $21. Crazy right?
- Kayak: This was comparatively short as their prices were a bit higher than the other yielded results. Despite this, I still found a room at Harrah’s for $25.
- TripAdvisor.com: Fourth and final set of results yielded rooms at The Excalibur for $26, Rio Hotel & Casino for $24, Harrah’s Hotel & Casino for $14, and The Strat for $17.
Didn’t think you could lock down a hotel reservation for those prices did you? If you don’t believe me try looking up room rates on a weekend day (i.e. Friday or Saturday). For the same hotels listed above, the weekend rate will be exponentially higher than aforementioned prices.
As for the winner out of all this and has my endorsement and promotion for the app/site that yielded the best and lowest price on a room, looks like Harrah’s is the winner as, seen above, they dug up a room [ON the Strip] for only $14. Yes you read that right: $14. From this, I declare the winner is ::insert dramatic pause here::…TripAdvisor.com!!!
Final note to also keep in mind is that yes the actual room rates may be dirt cheap (especially that Harrah’s Hotel & Casino rate for $14) that does not include other fees that the hotel charges like the security/incidentals deposit (which is usually between $50 and $200) or the resort fee they’re able to get away with charging you due to the fact that they’re considered “major” hotels and are located on The Strip.
Hopefully this will be of use to you to refer to next time you’re booking that impromptu weekend in Vegas with the girls/boys for that bachelor/bachelorette/just “going to get f*cked up and get your gambling addiction fed” event and you’re trying to figure out what days to book and on which apps/websites.
Stay safe out there.
Mikey ;-)
