Going to Las Vegas? How to Book Hotels Cheaper

Let’s examine some packages you can book right now for June 2008. I picked Indianapolis at random and found a package for $494 (tax incl.) staying in the Sahara Hotel on June 8-13. Seems like a great price to me and it actually is. There are drawbacks however - some fairly severe. First, you leave at 8:13 pm on a Sunday - which is fine if you work on Sundays and need to leave in the evening anyway. This is NOT a non-stop flight however and you need to deplane in Denver and switch aircraft, which means a total travel time of over 5 hours. Because of the time change, you arrive at 10:29 pm which means you likely won’t be in your room until near midnight. Returning is nothing short of a nightmare. You leave Vegas at 7:44 PM (what do you do all day, especially with your bags?), switch planes in Denver and arrive in Indianapolis at 5:03 am on Saturday. If you are going to work that day this schedule might work fine. Personally I don’t want to arrive in my house around 7am, bleary eyed and no doubt exhausted.

Now for the hotel. The Sahara once was a Vegas icon hotel. Now, it’s rated only three out of five and of the first four reviews I read, two said stay away and two said the hotel was acceptable, albeit old. One of the main drawbacks is that it is located at the (north) end of the Strip and if you wanted to go to places like the Mirage or Luxor, you would have to cab it or rent a car. There is a $6.00 per night hotel surcharge as well. In the end, the $494 package actually will set you back over $524 not including cabs to the Strip or renting a car. And you get pretty lousy flight times to boot. I examined trips from San Francisco, Denver and L. A. as well and it was the same story in every case.

How would we do on our own though? You can leave Indy at noon and arrive in Vegas (through Denver again) by 5:30 pm for $330 on Frontier (the same airline as Travelocity was using), however, you have to take the same flight back arriving at 5 am. If you want to upgrade to a more reasonable return flight, leaving at 1 pm and arriving in Indy just before midnight it costs $380. If you take the same flight out of Indy as Travelocity’s (leaving at 8:13 pm) it costs $310. The Sahara has a rate of $32 per night so it looks like it would cost about $160 (plus tax) for the hotel and $380 for the far more reasonable flight times, totaling about $575 (estimated with taxes) or $470 plus tax with the less desirable flights. Compare this to the Travelocity package of $494 (plus $30 for the hotel surcharge) and it actually costs MORE to book the package than separately.

I wrote a series about Las Vegas packages on my blog and if you read it you will find my best advice is to not stay in the same hotel, but be willing to move from one hotel to a couple others. The Luxor is only $80 for 6/8, Ballys is $79 on 6/9-11 and New York, New York is only $90 for 6/12. Take the best flights from Indy ($380) and add $400 plus tax to stay in three heart of the Strip hotels, add cab fares to your various hotels and you are out the door for perhaps $850, compared to Travelocity’s $921 at the New York, New York with the same flights. Or book into a cheaper hotel like Circus, Circus for all five nights for only $47 per night. This would total perhaps $680 (incl. tax) - far less than what Travelocity offers for the same hotel and flights - $868.

In the end, you might save a few bucks by purchasing a Third Party package but the trade-off is flight times that are nightmarish or hotels that are less than first class and rooms not in ‘towers’ or other desirable locations. Plus, you actually waste almost one whole day leaving after 8 pm and getting in after bedtime. When all is said and done, you can get great flights, accommodations right on the Strip (where no cab fares are required as you can walk to other hotels) and be able to sample two or three top hotels to boot for much less than package deals. Just be flexible and creative.