Las Vegas is full of fees that can easily add
up to more than a hundred dollars a day.
So in this video
I'm gonna tell you how to avoid those fees,
including those pesky resort fees.
The first annoying fee that you'll encounter a lot
are restaurants adding various fees onto your bill.
It might be a concession fee, a venue fee, an inflation fee,
they'll call it whatever they want.
Basically, it's a, "because we can" fee
and if you just ask your server
or ask the manager to take it off your bill,
every single time that has worked for me.
And normally this fee runs between like three to 6%
of your bill. But in reality, it's a very easy one to avoid.
The next annoying fee is parking fees.
Parking can easily run you $20
or more per night here on the Las Vegas Strip
and most of the hotels on the strip do charge for parking.
There's a few at the north end
of the strip where I'm at that don't.
Venetian and Palazzo, Wynn and Encore,
Resorts World, Treasure Island,
none of these charge for parking.
So you can always park at one of these hotels
and then take an Uber to wherever you're staying
and that could save you
like a hundred dollars during your stay
depending on how long you're staying here.
But another way to avoid the parking fees without the hassle
of getting an Uber or something like that,
is to get entry level status in the Casino Loyalty programs.
And there's a couple ways you can do this.
Number one is if you have a military ID,
and it has to be US military unfortunately,
but if you have a military ID,
you can bring that to the Players Club desk in the casino
and they're going to give you automatic first
tier status in that program.
And at least at MGM Resorts and Caesars,
that qualifies you for free parking.
And most of the strip hotels are owned
by one of those two companies.
And another way, if you're not military or former military,
that you can get free parking
is to achieve entry level status
in their Casino Loyalty program by playing there.
And the truth is that most people coming
to Vegas play enough during the course
of their stay that if they concentrated their play
at the casino they're staying at,
well then they're probably going to play enough,
gamble enough to get entry level status.
But I want to say don't gamble just
for the purpose of trying to get status.
Just gamble what you would anyway.
And if you can reach entry level status from that,
consider that a bonus that you don't have to pay
for parking during your trip.
The next annoying fee that you're gonna have to deal
with are internet fees.
So, at all these resorts
your resort fee is supposed to cover your internet,
but at a lot of them, you're limited to four devices.
Or even at Caesar's Properties, you're limited
to two devices connected per 24 hour period.
And if you exceed that limit,
well then you're going to have to pay a lot
of money to connect any additional devices.
So my tip for you to avoid this fee
is to bring your own travel router with you.
You just hook that up in the room
and you can connect as many devices as you want
to your own router without paying any extra fees.
Now, let's talk about how to get
out of paying the most dreaded fee in Las Vegas,
the resort fees.
Almost every hotel on the strip charges a resort fee,
but there are actually quite a few ways to get
out of paying them.
Number one is to get status in a Casino Loyalty program.
So I talked about status earlier
and tier one status generally gets you free parking.
If you get tier two status,
so at MGM, that would be gold.
At Caesar properties, that would be Diamond.
This gets you comped resort fees.
So this can literally save you $50
per night that you're staying.
Now do you get to these statuses?
Well, it's not an insignificant amount
of play that it takes to get there
to the tier two status. However, it's definitely doable
even for someone like me, a low roller like myself.
I can get there if I'm loyal to one casino chain
and play there consistently.
Like the higher rollers, they can easily get there in a day.
But me, it might take a couple of stays
being loyal to one casino program.
You can also speed
up getting to that tier two status by going
to Vegas when a casino chain is offering bonus points
or accelerated tier credits for coming on certain days.
In addition to earning status by spending money
at the resorts or by gambling at them,
you can also get status by getting the founder's card.
So the founder's card isn't a credit card,
but it's like a membership card
that gets you various rewards.
This isn't cheap though.
It's $600 a year.
So I don't know if I can recommend this.
I've never had it. But something you can do
is you can get a cheap credit card,
like a cheap Hilton Amex card
with an annual fee of only like a hundred dollars
that comes with a bunch of benefits on its own.
And with this credit card, you get Hilton Gold status,
which at certain times of the year
you can status match to Wyndham Diamond.
And once you have Wyndham Diamond,
you can status match that to Caesar's Diamond.
And then I've been doing this thing for years where
I just status match from Wyndham to Caesar's,
Caesar's back to Wyndham,
and I've continued to keep my Caesar's Diamond status
without ever qualifying by gambling.
I just do status matches a couple times a year
and that gets me unlimited comped resort fees
at Caesar's Properties.
Another way to get your resort fees comped
or at least discounted, is to, when you get to Vegas,
sign up for the casino loyalty card
in the hotel where you're staying.
And then during your stay,
try to concentrate most of your play at that hotel
or other hotels that use that same loyalty program.
And then when it gets close to the end of your stay,
you're going to pick up the phone in your room
and you're going to ask for the casino host on duty.
And when you get the casino host on the phone,
you're going to ask them to review your play
and see if they can comp anything off your bill.
So I checked out of Mandalay Bay,
and I did this where I contacted the casino host on duty
and they're like, "sure, we can comp $120 off your bill."
That's three nights of resort fees gone.
But even on the trips where I've hardly played at all
they've been like, yeah, sure,
we can take $20 off here bill.
No problem.
So this is a really easy way that almost everybody
overlooks to get those resort fees comped in Vegas.
I've been staying at the Venetian during this trip
and on my first couple of nights here
I had some problems with the housekeeping.
So what I did is I went
to the front desk and explained to them my experience.
I didn't ask for anything to get comped.
I didn't ask for anything for free.
But after explaining what happened
and what I had experienced with housekeeping,
they're like, "hey, I'm really sorry for this.
This is definitely not up to Venetian Standard.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna comp your
first night of resort fees."
And this was $50 taken off my bill
just by going to the front desk
and explaining what had happened with housekeeping.
I didn't even ask for anything.
So use these tips and I can almost guarantee
that you're going to be paying a lot less in resort fees
and many times having your resort fees totally comped.
Watch this video next
on the biggest tourist traps to avoid in Las Vegas.