Hotels - The Strip Vs Downtown - Location, location, location

For first time visitors to Las Vegas there really is only one place to stay; Las Vegas Boulevard, AKA ‘The Strip’.  This four mile stretch of road contains all of the modern mega hotels which you’ll have no doubt seen in films or on the TV.  The part of Las Vegas more famous in yesteryear is known as ‘Downtown’ where hotels such as the Golden Nugget are located along Fremont Street.  Whilst this part of town is definitely worth a trip to see and is a lot of fun, The Strip is definitely the place to stay for first time visitors.

Assuming you’re happy to stay on The Strip, the next question is precisely where?  The answer to this question is covered in the following sections.

The hotels along The Strip extend all the way from Mandalay Bay at the southern end to the Stratosphere in the north. However, as the distance between these two points is approximately 4 miles, choosing a hotel in the right location is extremely important if you’re keen to maximise your Vegas experience. Therefore, I would recommend that you stay no further south than MGM Grand / New York New York, or no further North than The Wynn/Encore. Sure, this excludes a number of hotels from selection (Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Circus Circus, Stratosphere to name a few), but similar class hotels for the same price can be found in much better locations.

In other major tourist cities around the world it can relatively easy and direct to get around. For example, in London or New York provided you’re near a tube or Subway station, you can easily get around the cities with limited walking. Vegas is not like this.

Let’s use Mandalay Bay as an example. Having stayed in Mandalay Bay I can say it is a gorgeous hotel with lovely facilities, a great pool and nice restaurants, but would I stay there again? In all likelihood, no. The reason being that it was just too time-consuming and problematic trying to get anywhere else on the strip.

If, for example, I wanted to get to the MGM Grand - which when looking out from a room window looks a mere stone’s throw away - it would surely only take 5-10 minutes to get there? Wrong, in all likelihood it would take nearer to 30 minutes. This is because if I took arguably the quickest way it would take in the region of 10 minutes to get from the hotel room to the monorail station. A further 5-10 minutes from there to the Excalibur stop, and from there you need to cross over two walkways to get inside the MGM Grand – and that’s just getting to a nearby hotel!

If you wished to say get to the Mirage or Venetian from Mandalay Bay, you would be best placed to take a cab (costly) or the Deuce bus up the strip. Again, you would need to get from your room onto the strip (10 minutes), wait for the next Deuce bus, and then a further 20 minutes or more to head up the strip.

Sure, these trips are fine as a one-off, but if you’re in town for say a week, these continual trips will soon get you frustrated, not to mention the issue of cost if you are frequently relying on the Deuce or taxis to get you around.

In summary, I would advise that it's best to stay no further south than the MGM Grand / New York New York, and no further north the The Wynn.