It's kind of interesting what's going on with Las Vegas. The fragile economy has sent grosses plunging and the casinos are coping with it by galloping off in all directions. Most are dropping prices on rooms to the point where you can pick up some incredible bargains, especially if you go mid-week…but they're still building new hotels with higher prices. The base prices of show tickets have never been less affordable but there are more and more "half-price" ticket booths around. Cirque du Soleil has recently begun offering deep discounts and they're like half the shows in the city. Low-minimum games are disappearing and it's costing more and more to eat in that town…but if you hunt a bit and stay out of the megaresorts, you can easily find affordable slots and grub. My last trip there, my friend Tom Galloway and I had darn good steak dinners for seven bucks each.
Due to low occupancy, some hotels are literally closing down floors or whole towers. The Mirage, which is a pretty big and usually-successful place, has closed down more than a dozen floors due to low occupancy. The Sahara and I think the Riviera have closed some of their floors, as well. Binion's has shut down all their hotel rooms and is just operating the casino part of its operation. But at the same time, Planet Hollywood just opened a new 1,200 room tower while the Hard Rock, Golden Nugget and Caesars have all added new towers and a brand-new hotel/condo complex called City Center is opening incrementally. It will soon have added nearly 6,000 rooms to the game. Other expansions and new casinos are still planned. This is at a time when airlines that fly in and out of Vegas are cutting back on the number of flights.
Several other major condo projects are under construction but quite a few have been aborted. They announced, sold some rooms, perhaps started building…and then plans collapsed, leaving buyers scrambling to reclaim their deposits. That whole market is in chaos. At one point, I somehow got on the mailing list for a new condominium complex a mile or so off The Strip and they were sending me messages, urging me to purchase a one-bedroom condo for $350,000. The same folks are now trying to get me to buy the same condo for $125,000. Less than half. That's gotta make the people who did buy at the old price feel grand.
So I don't know what's going on there and you kinda get the feeling that the companies building (or not building) all these projects don't know, either. There's a casino term for a gambler who's mindlessly throwing out — and therefore, generally losing — money in the desperate hope of getting some outlier of a lucky break. They call that "streaming" and that seems to be what's going on with the financiers in Vegas these days. They're streaming.
If you aren't insistent on staying in the newest hotel to open, you can get some decent bargains there these days. Low-to-mid-range hotels will sell you a room for $25-50 a night if the night isn't Friday or Saturday. Some of the nicer places will take you in for $75-100. You just have to shop around a bit on the Internet…and here's a little tip if you think you might want to take a trip there soon…
Get yourself a special "junk mail" e-mail address at some place like GMail or Hotmail — an address you'll use only for this. Then take twenty minutes and go to the websites of all the major hotels (this page will get you to them) and sign up for every promotional e-mail list you see. Most of 'em have such a list and when they get desperate to fill rooms, that's the first place they offer the deals they maybe don't want to advertise too blatantly. I'm on some and I've received some amazing bargains, including package deals that basically give you back your entire low room fees in promotional coupons.
It's been so long since I was much of a gambler there that I don't think these offers are to get me there in the hope that I'll be wagering serious bucks. I think they're now anxious to get anyone there. It might as well be you.