Before you go online to book a hotel for your trip to Las Vegas, you need to be aware of the best times to visit the city. There is actually a peak season which is the fall and winter months from October through April, and an Off Season (as it’s referred to) during the warn and hot months, namely April through October. And then there is what I call the “It Doesn’t Matter” Season which is year round. All you have to do is avoid the Strip and anytime that there is a business conference or trade fair happening in the city. The hotels and motels and all those great deals on rooms disappear well in advance whenever a business or trade event is coming into town.
What people don’t often realize is that the focus of attention in all of Las Vegas is that 4.5 mile stretch of pavement known as the Strip where all the big resort hotels are located. If you venture off the strip a few blocks or more, you will see that the farther away from the Strip that you get, the cheaper the prices get. If you’re worried about getting from your hotel to the Strip, don’t — the cabs in Vegas are dirt cheap compared to other cities.
So here’s the first rule of thumb when it comes to finding cheap Vegas hotels. There’s no such thing as a bad deal. If you’d like to test that theory, than log on to the website HotelsCheap.com (http://las-vegas.hotelscheap.org) and just check out the first few pages. All the good deals are off the Strip and most of the hotels are at least 3-star rated. Anymore, it is so convenient to check out all those websites that blitz you with their advertising.
The list is limitless, but aside from the website above, there is also Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, Priceline, and Travelocity, and they all compete with one another with fantastic deals on cheap Vegas hotels. Typically, the best prices are Sunday through Thursday nights and the rooms cost about 1/3 what they do on the weekends, holidays, and whenever there’s a major conference or expo going on. Those times it a case of “Let the gouging begin!” But even with the gouging, the rooms dry up very quickly. As has been mentioned before, always check the itinerary for major events in the city before even thinking about going.
