Last month I wrote about MGM’s Aria Las Vegas charging $26 for each bottle of water they leave in guest rooms. You’d be better off buying water at the airport when you land, at the inflated prices there. It was the perfect example of the kind of costs that make people feel cheated on a Las Vegas trip. Vegas is suffering, and executives there can’t seem to figure out why.
A reader shares that the were billed “$50 to charge a laptop” at Paris Las Vegas, and they thought this was “an even more outrageous fee.”
On our last trip, my adult daughter brought her computer to finish some last minute work and needed a workspace. The only suitable workspace was a small desk and chair that also housed the minibar. From your article, I told her to avoid the minibar, since moving anything will result in charges.
She set up her laptop on the desk and looked for an outlet. There was one right above the desk, but it was full, so she unplugged one of the cords and plugged in the computer.
The guest was charged $50 (plus tax!) and there wasn’t an obvious explanation for the fee, so the guest pressed for an explanation. There was a “very small sign with even smaller print that says Please refrain from unplugging the tray. If this occurs, a fee of $50 will be applied.”
The little sign was not near the outlet. Disgusted, I went to the front desk to have the charge removed. The woman there told me that they couldn’t remove it because it was a third party fee. She even had a picture of the minibar with the sign at her fingertips to show me the warning.
The head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said on Thursday, “Visitation is down about 7 %, ADR is down, and RevPAR is down 14 % — the largest drop we’ve seen this century outside a crisis.”
Indeed, the city just saw the sharpest month‑on‑month deterioration outside 9/11, the financial crisis and 2020 pandemic shutdowns. CoStar’s weekly note on the city: “Las Vegas posted the second‑largest occupancy drop of any U.S. market, off 11.9 % last week.”
| Current level | Year-Over-Year | |||
| Visitor volume (Jan‑May 2025) | 16.46m | ‑6.5 % | ||
| Hotel occupancy (May 2025) | 83% | ‑3.1 | ||
| Room nights occupied (May 2025) | 3.88m | ‑5.5 % | ||
| Strip ADR (May 2025) | $212 | ‑1.2 % | ||
| Strip RevPAR (May 2025) | $181 | ‑4.8 % | ||
| Strip Gaming Revenue (May 2025) | $714m | ‑3.9 % | ||
| Weekly occupancy (July 13-19) | 74.30% | ‑11.9% |
There’s price fatigue and fee backlash; inflation and high interest rates squeezing leisure travelers that fill value and mid-tier properties (driving down their rates, putting pressure on upper tier); Canadians not visiting the U.S.; weaker value from service cuts and higher costs in response to ~ 30% wage growth since the pandemic.
Why could this possibly be happening?
(HT: Dan F.)
The biggest Fails here hasn’t been mentioned
1) There is no space on the desk to do anything. The light takes up space. The ice bucket takes up space, and the upsell mini-bar crap takes up space. If I want to actually use the desk, I need to throw the ice bucket on the floor, slide the light to the left & hope it doesn’t fall off, and curse as my right arm hits the mini-bar crap as I try to write an email.
2) Not enough outlets. Sure, Paris was built 25+ years ago, but the rooms have been renovated at least once. Instead of using a precious outlet to upsell some crap, add more outlets.
Vegas hotel management could learn a lot from the cruise ship industry in terms of how to utilize space while making a room both inviting and functional.
@Rob – Let me get this straight: you and your family had a full-blown debate over whether to turn off a goddamn light bulb that costs less per hour than a single breath of air in a Walmart? A 60-watt bulb burns maybe a penny an hour, and an LED is practically doing charity work at a fifth of that. If brain cells were dollars, your family couldn’t light a flashlight. And if the goal was to burn calories arguing over nothing while saving fractions of a cent, congratulations, you folks officially discovered the least efficient way to be poor AND dumb.
“The ‘little sign’ was not near the outlet”?! It was right in front of the person’s eyes; Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder could see it but it was deliberately ignored. If people simply refuse to accept the consequences of their actions that’s their tough luck. Perhaps next time see if the hotel has a business center that will accomodate them.
I agree with Doug on unions. Doug: don’t listen to these whiners.
What should the penalty be for the hotel providing inadequate electrical points and inadequate desk space? Should we deduct $50 per night for each of these?
Vegas is a total scam now! The locals now are horrible also. Its like they hate the world. Just dispute the charge on your credit card and say you never authorized it.
A friend of mine nicknames Las Vegas “Lost Wages”. For good reason.
I would put the $50 charge into dispute with the credit card issuer. Tell them your daughter is blind and couldn’t read the card because it is not in braille, so she can’t be bound by the terms. I find the more elaborate and bizarre I make a story the more likely the merchant and credit card issuer are to write off the charge rather than rebutting my argument.
@Justin G — Nah, you and @Doug are wrong about unions. Unions, especially within aviation (pilots, flight attendants) continue to be a net positive for society. For workers, of course, unions enable better wages, benefits, work conditions, and general support in their fields. For consumers, a better, more stable workforce often improves product and service quality. And, for business owners, a stable, prosperous middle class (enabled by those unions) often increases profits as that consumer base can actually spend at their businesses. I’ve seen in right wing circles how it has become a rite of passage to blindly attack unions, but we really are all better off in a society with them. Or, you can retreat to Galt’s Gulch and rebuild your own society were everyone is a rugged individualist.
The best view of “Lost Wages, NV” is out of the rear view mirror.
Screw Vegas. As long as tourism was booming they had visitors over a barrel. Time for visitors to show them that they’ve had enough and spend money elsewhere.
Once visitors stop visiting and spending money, the casino operators will get the message. Sadly, too many of those that suffer are the employees who have no power over what the operators try to extract from visitors and workers.