Las Vegas Sticker Shock

The popularity of Las Vegas continues to grow. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCA) just announced record breaking visitation and hotel occupancy levels for 2004. LVCA predicts even greater occupancy for 2005. Visitors have returned to Las Vegas at a level preceding September 11th prior record breaking pace. And with good reason. Today Las Vegas offers more than gambling and cheap buffets. It really is the ideal three day getaway destination. You can travel the world in a just a few blocks. The Danny Ocean character in the movie Oceans Eleven described it best, "Las Vegas, America's playground."

With the record return of visitors, 95 percent of the strip hotel rooms are occupied during the weekend now, get ready for room rate sticker shock. We have already written briefly about the increase in weekend fly/hotel vacation packages prices to Las Vegas. And we believe the trend will continue. The average price of nightly hotel room during the weekend will rise to average rate of $200.00 this year for some of the more popular new mega strip resorts.

However, there are still ways to avoid Las Vegas sticker shock. In the next few weeks we publish some of the ways we have found to spend less getting and staying in Las Vegas. Stay tuned.

Insider Tip: Room rates rise dramatically in Las Vegas on Friday and Saturday nights. Avoid the strip during the weekends and you can sometimes cut your costs by more than a half. If you plan on visiting the strip during the weekend, head north. The northern strip hotels offer the most affordable rates during the weekend. The new strip monorail now makes the travel up and down the strip in minutes nullifying the disadvantage of staying on the northern end.