You’ve heard the saying. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” – it’s on T-shirts, fridge magnets and the back of every taxi. However, most visitors to Las Vegas have got nothing to hide. Instead, their experience is more like ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in an enormous resort hotel’ as they are so large, you can’t escape from them.
We stayed at The Palazzo at The Venetian Resort during our trip to Las Vegas with friends, and this is what we learned about the big Las Vegas hotels, the resort fees nobody warns you about, and how to pick where to stay.
What happens in Vegas? For most of us, it happens inside a giant resort hotel. Here’s the truth about Las Vegas resort fees, the big hotels and where to stay.
The quick answer for anyone who came here for the phrase itself – it isn’t an old proverb, it’s a marketing slogan. The advertising agency R&R Partners created it in 2003 for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, originally as “What Happens Here, Stays Here.”
The idea was to sell Las Vegas as a place for adult freedom, where you could let loose on a trip and leave it behind in the city when you went home. The saying caught on quickly as it suited the ‘Stag Do’ and gambling culture of the city. Films like The Hangover cemented it, and the city refreshed the campaign in 2020 as “What Happens Here, Only Happens Here.”
So the meaning is simple: whatever you get up to on your trip is nobody’s business back home. Though with a smartphone in every pocket these days, keeping your Las Vegas escapades quiet, is easier said than done.
Right, phrase sorted. Now for the part that surprised us most, the hotels.
Las Vegas is a city built purely for leisure, and it has one of the highest concentrations of hotel rooms anywhere in the world. Current figures point to around 150,000 rooms across the city, with dozens of major brands lined up along the Las Vegas Strip.
Most of the big names are what’s known as ‘resort hotels’, places like the MGM Grand, the Venetian, the Wynn and Caesars Palace. These aren’t hotels in the way you might picture from a European city break. They’re self-contained worlds, built to keep you inside for as long as possible.
Before we get to our stay, this is the single most useful thing to know before you book, and it’s the one that catches people out at checkout.
Most of the large Las Vegas hotels charge a mandatory daily Resort fee on top of your room rate. It covers elements such as wifi, the gym and the pool, but here’s the catch – you pay it whether or not you use any of these facilities. It’s charged per room, per night, and it’s collected by the hotel at the end of your stay.
At the time of writing, resort fees on The Strip typically run from around $45 to $55 a night before tax. With a local lodging tax added on (about 13.4%), the top-end fees come to roughly $62 a night. Over a four-night trip, that’s an extra $200 or so before you’ve spent a penny on your actual room. The fees have climbed steadily for years, so it’s worth checking the current amount for your chosen hotel rather than assuming.
A few things that help:
Check the total, not the headline rate: Since a US rule change in 2025, hotels now have to show the full price including mandatory fees upfront, so look at the all-in figure when you compare.
Loyalty tiers can waive the fee: Higher-tier members of the big casino schemes (MGM Rewards Gold and above, Caesars Rewards Diamond and above) often get resort fees waived.
Points stays can help too: Some hotel loyalty schemes, like Hilton and Hyatt, waive resort fees on points bookings. Worth checking your own scheme's benefits before you book, as this is exactly how we shaved costs off our own stay.
A handful of hotels charge no resort fee at all: The list changes, but options have included the Four Seasons, the Best Western Plus Casino Royale on the Strip and Four Queens downtown.
| Hotel | Resort fee (USD) | Approx. £ GBP | Peak season room rate (USD, indicative) | Notes / inclusions (common) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Palazzo (at Venetian) | $62.36 | £46.60 | $350 – $600+ | Wi-Fi, fitness (for 2), calls, etc. Suites are larger. |
| Venetian | $62.36 | £46.60 | $350 – $600+ | Same as Palazzo. |
| Bellagio | $62.36 | £46.60 | $400 – $700+ | Iconic; higher demand. |
| Wynn / Encore | $62.36 | £46.60 | $400 – $750+ | Luxury positioning. |
| Aria | $62.36 | £46.60 | $300 – $550+ | Modern, good value in luxury tier. |
| The Cosmopolitan | $62.36 | £46.60 | $350 – $650+ | Vibrant vibe. |
| Caesars Palace | ~$62.30 | £46.55 | $300 – $550+ | Classic, central location. |
| MGM Grand | $56.69 | £42.35 | $250 – $450+ | Larger property, often more affordable. |
Parking - several big resorts now charge separately for it, often $18 to $25 a night, even for hotel guests.
We chose The Palazzo at The Venetian Resort because there were good deals on at the time of booking. It’s also an IHG Alliance Hotel, and as we collect reward points with the InterContinental Hotels Group, that meant some extra savings on top.
It’s the sheer scale of the place that hits you first. You arrive into a huge marble lobby with soaring ceilings, and it’s impressive both inside and out. There was a long check-in queue when we got there, but it moved quickly and the whole thing was efficient.
To reach the lifts up to the rooms, you have to walk across the ground floor, through the gaming tables, slot machines, bars and even nightclubs. The lights are bright, the music is loud, and it’s a full assault on the senses after a long-haul flight and next to no sleep. We felt like rabbits in the headlights.
We were wide awake at 4.30am the next morning thanks to jet lag, counting down to the ground floor Starbucks opening at 6.00am. Even at that hour the gaming floor was in full swing. It never stops. It’s a proper 24-hour playground for anyone who wants it.
Once the caffeine kicked in, we went exploring. The Palazzo and the Venetian hotels bookend a large mall of high-end shops and restaurants, and the whole thing is designed to keep you inside for as long as possible.
You lose all track of time in here. There are deliberately no clocks, and there’s a fake LED sky complete with moving clouds, so you lose all sense of whether it’s day or night. It feels like stepping into the Twilight Zone.
Over on the Venetian side, there’s a Disney-style recreation of Venice complete with a canal, gondolas, St Mark’s Square, the Doge’s Palace and the Rialto Bridge.
You can book a gondola ride, though we decided to save our money and skip it, as the boats don’t go anywhere you can’t reach on foot. However, they would have made for some lovely photos.
If you do fancy a ride, the tip is to check when the ticket booths open on the hotel’s website and get there early, as they sell out regularly. There are two rides to choose from:
Indoor ride: Good in the summer heat.
Outdoor ride: Best light just before sunset.
You can book both if you want to. We had dinner one evening at a restaurant overlooking the outdoor canal, which was beautifully lit up after dark.
One of our group wanted to see Caesars Palace, so off we went, and we found a strangely familiar setup. Once you’ve seen a couple of the big resorts, a pattern emerges. Nearly all of them have a:
Theme (Venetian, Roman, Parisian, Egyptian, Manhattan).
Grand lobby welcomes you in.
Ground-floor gaming hall full of lights and machines.
Large first-floor shopping mall with no clocks and a fake sky.
Concert auditorium, hosting big-names on a Las Vegas residency.
Extras tied to the theme, like theme park rides, aquariums or museums.
We wandered over to watch the fountains outside the Bellagio Hotel and popped inside, and sure enough, the same ingredients were all there.
So, when you’re choosing where to stay, the honest truth is that it doesn’t hugely matter which of the big hotels you pick, because the core experience is much the same across all of them. Pick the theme you like the look of most, check the resort fee, and factor in where it sits on The Strip for the things you want to do.
It’s so easy to lose whole days inside these places that you have to make a conscious effort to leave and get some fresh air. The good news is there’s plenty to book outside the hotel walls:
You could also consider a:
Trip out to the Hoover Dam.
Walk along the Las Vegas Strip to take in the sights.
Ride on the High Roller observation wheel.
Relaxing kayak on Lake Mead.
Even aiming for half a day in the hotel and half a day out of it, will give your trip some balance.
Many of the big hotels are designed to be the destination in themselves, rather than a base for exploring. They want you to sleep, eat, drink, gamble, hit the pool and see a show without ever leaving.
You can absolutely embrace that, if that’s the trip you want. You’ll have paid a fair bit for the room, so you may as well enjoy every part of it. Or you can aim for more of a balance, as we did.
The one thing we’d say is this: come to Las Vegas with a plan or at least a few ideas of what you want to see, to avoid becoming hotel-bound and missing everything else the city has to offer. A little planning goes a long way here.
In closing
Las Vegas is a man-made playground where you can take in as much or as little as you like. The hotels are an experience in their own right, bigger and more all-encompassing than we ever expected, and worth soaking up. Just don't let them swallow the whole trip. A bit of planning, a clear idea of the resort fees, and a couple of days out in the fresh air, and you'll get the best of it.
See you next time Vegas.
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