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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Angelika Attentive readers of this publication already know that many many years ago, Michael and I met in a car rental agency in Las Vegas, and since this year we're celebrating a very special anniversary, we returned to the glamorous city in the desert on this occasion. Las Vegas has been constantly reinventing itself over the years, and therefore has changed quite a bit from the olden days. Yesteryear's cheap hotel paradise with all-you-can-eat buffets galore made room for luxury resorts and gourmet restaurants. Of course, there's still plenty of casinos around, but those apparently aren't the gold mines they used to be anymore, and so the entertainment industry tycoons there have invented new ways to separate tourists from their hard earned dollars.
There's an ongoing theme in the money-grubbing game played by the casinos lately, and it's to take money for the most ridiculous things. You might be familiar with this scheme when flying major US airlines: Paying for checked in luggage, extra fees for seats with more leg room, non-free meals on domestic flights, or paying for the privilege to pick your own seat on international Lufthansa flights to avoid getting assigned a random one. But who wants to be squeezed into the middle seat of a row of five on a 12 hour flight? There's lots of moaning and gnashing of teeth, but in the end, customers pay up.
Most hotels on the Las Vegas Strip have been charging the so-called resort fee for quite a while now. They're slapping between $20 and $32 per night onto the room bill without actually providing value for the customer, because hardly anyone uses the pool, the fitness center oder the spa. And guests have no choice anyway, because the fee is mandatory for all guests, whether they ever set foot in those areas or not. Hotels could of course just as well add the fee to the published price for the room per night, but they'd rather advertise a lower price and then add hidden fees when customers click to buy.
My guess is that major Las Vegas Casinos are employing armies of bean counters whose only job it is to invent new fees for guests who grudgingly just pay them because they have no other choice. And, low and behold, last time we were in Las Vegas in September, the first Casinos started charging for parking. Until then, the Casino mantra appeared to be to focus on attracting as many guests as possible, by making their arrival as easy and swift as possible. Both valet and self parking were free of charge for that reason.
Since June 2016 guests have been paying between $8 and $10 per day for self parking, and $13-$18 for valet parking at the MGM group casinos Aria, Bellagio, Circus Circus, Exalibur, Delano, Luxor, Mandaley Bay, MGM Grand, Mirage, Monte Carlo, New York New York, and Vdara. On self parking, the first hour is free, however, until now. Also, residents of Nevada get a free pass until the end of this year. It remains to be seen if other casinos follow suit, like those of the Wynn group. I'm afraid that they will. As we've seen with air travel luggage fees, it's always the competitor with low advertised prices and hidden fees that makes the deal.
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