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Timing and Weather: Apart from hotel costs, you may also want to think about your temperature and weather preferences when planning a trip to LV. Summers there are very hot indeed, with temperatures rising over 100 degrees in the daytime quite regularly. If you prefer cooler temperatures, plan your trip between November and March and bring a light coat. In the winter, daytimes in LV tend to bring highs in the fifties and sixties, with temperatures typically in the thirties and forties at night. I've been there in January when there were bitter winds at night, but Las Vegas rarely has snow. If you plan to spend most of your trip indoors, know that most LV indoor environments are carefully climate-controlled and it probably doesn't make too much difference what time of year you go.

Location is (Almost) Everything

When you are on your own--especially if you are not driving--it pays to think carefully about what you expect from your Las Vegas accommodations. If you are so inclined, it might not hurt to make separate lists of things you need and those that you merely want. With over 150, 000 rooms to choose from and new ones constantly being added, it is not so much a question of what is available as it is what you prefer and what your budget will allow. Although people who have never been to Las Vegas tend to assume the Strip is where it's at because this is what they've mainly seen on TV and the movies, there are plenty of other options. You will for sure want to see the Strip for the sheer spectacle, but especially if you are not driving you may want to consider staying elsewhere. The best news is that even if by some chance you miscalculate the first time around and wind up staying on the Strip when you prefer downtown or vice-versa, you can always hop on a cab or a bus and expand your options. In a place where there are so many choices, there is really no excuse other than apathy for not spending your downtime in places and ways that are not to your liking.

Location for Drivers Versus Non-Drivers: The Strip is Not the Only Game in Town

Although there are certainly benefits to having a car in Las Vegas, driving there is for the brave. The traffic tends to be much worse than the old days and very stressful on cars in the summertime due to the high temperatures, the ramps and entrances can be confusing, and the constant bombardment of billboards, neon, fountains, crowds and architectural simulacra may lead to overwhelm and distract drivers unaccustomed to visual chaos . Las Vegas does have buses, there are cabs, and there are lots of shuttles, so although you undoubtedly lose something in convenience by not having a car, you can certainly get around without one. You can even walk, just be sure to wear sunscreen and don't get mowed down by vehicles swerving off the busy streets into hotel entrances.

One thing you may not be aware of that may influence you in the direction of driving or renting a car is that valet parking in Las Vegas is one of the best bargains in town. For a mere $2 or so per trip, you can drop off and pick up your car at most hotel entrances, saving you what can be a considerable hike from the self-park. If you think a long hike back to your room sounds like a good idea because you need the exercise, I salute your fortitude. I would still strongly encourage you to take a good, hard look at the layout of your perspective lodgings and take note of the locations of the distance from the self-park to the rooms of any hotel you are considering. If, for instance, you are in a distant tower of a crowded hotel with slow elevators, you might be looking at a fifteen-to-thirty-minute slog from your car to your room. This is by no means a universal condition, but varies tremendously from place to place. In the early days of the Rio, you could easily park in the outside lot and step right into the front entrance, less than five minutes from your room. The distance problem is worst in some of the sprawling hotel-casino complexes, as the downtown structures tend to be much more compact.

If you have decided not to drive on your trip and you are determined to stay on the Strip, these are some of the things you should be aware of. Many of the larger Strip hotels (and some of the off-Strip ones) are complete entertainment complexes, offering not only lodgings and food, but (of course) gaming, spas, shopping, amusement parks, museum exhibitions, waterways, singing, dancing, skating, magicians, impersonators, and erupting volcanoes. If you want to have as many amenities as possible under one roof and you have the budget for it, go for Caesars Palace, Bellagio, MGM Grand, the Venetian, the Mirage, or another of the grander hotels. You can also find the same approach off-strip at the Rio, Sam's Town, Hard Rock, and a few other places, but be prepared to either hike a distance or wait for shuttles cabs or public transportation when you want to venture outside home base. In general, the later it is, the more likely you'll have to choose between walking and paying for a cab. The hotel shuttles to the Strip and other hotels tend to wind down by around midnight, as your hotel would prefer that you wind up your gambling and other carousing under their roof.

This brings us to the main disadvantage of non-downtown Strip and off-Strip accommodations for non-drivers, namely that as a rule in Las Vegas, buildings tend to be much farther apart than they look. This is because they are GINORMOUS, but do not be fooled by the illusion. I like to hike long distances and consider nothing more fun than walking Las Vegas Boulevard until my feet fall off. If you wish to venture outside your hotel and walking a lot is not an option for you, you may want to expand your options and consider staying downtown where things are close together. Also bear in mind that Las Vegas tends to be very hot in summer, with temperatures routinely over 100 degrees. The catch is that none of the downtown accommodations are full-service resorts in the sense of the Goliaths on the Strip. It's a tradeoff, but one consolation is that even the most high-end downtown accommodations (The Golden Nugget) tend to cost less than a luxury Strip hotel.

Staying Downtown

Aside from budget, the main reason to consider staying downtown is that you can wander from casino to casino without wearing a hole in your shoes. With the Golden Nugget, Four Queens, Fitzgerald's, Golden Gate, the Plaza, Main Street Station, El Cortez and more, plus street vendors, restaurants, bars, movies, and an ongoing light show in the form of the Fremont Street Experience, there is plenty to do without wandering too far afield. The focus downtown is more openly on gambling than it is on the Strip, meaning non-gamblers will have fewer options at their immediate disposal but can always hop a bus or a cab to go elsewhere if they are so inclined (more on that later).

Having stayed at three downtown hotels myself, I recommend that you consider either the Golden Nugget or the El Cortez. Which of these you choose may depend on budget, so if funds are short the El Cortez may be your best option. All other things (namely rooms) being approximately equal, the El Cortez is the one of the few tattered remnants of Old Las Vegas still standing and hence deserves your support. Many rooms have been renovated, the casino is a good one, and the rates tend to be comparatively reasonable. You may hear that it is seedy and it may be lacking glitz, but when I stayed there my fellow travelers included families, students, and all kinds of people. The one catch of staying at the El Cortez is that (like Main Street Station) it is a couple of blocks away from the center of the Fremont action. These are short city blocks unlike the long suburban-style blocks on the Strip, but if you must be right smack in the center of the action, the El Cortez is not your best choice.

If you want to stay downtown, have a few bucks, and feel it is important to be where the action is, stay at the Golden Nugget. The location is unbeatable, the rooms are clean and larger than average, the pool has a good reputation (I have stayed there but I haven't used the pool), and there's a Starbucks downstairs and a Krispy Kreme a few steps away at Fitzgerald's. Breakfast!! Being more expensive, the Nugget caters more to high rollers than the other downtown casinos but you only have to walk a few steps away to gamble somewhere else. My personal favorites for gambling are the Fremont and the El Cortez, but you will have no shortage of choices. For me, the only major downside of the Golden Nugget for the solo travel is the limited food choices. The Carson Street Cafe is nice if a bit pricey, but the big restaurants don't seem to look as interesting as they should and there is really nowhere on the premises to pick up cheap, fast takeout. You can find that elsewhere on Fremont, though, so it should not be a deal-breaker unless you are a stickler for having everything under one roof.

Beyond my suggestions, the downtown world is your oyster. The rooms tend to be on the small side and the amenities are minimal compared to those available on the Strip, but remodeling is an ongoing process (The Lady Luck, generally considered to be the most down-on-its-luck downtown establishment, has been closed for remodeling since 2006) and Mayor Oscar Goodman continues to push for downtown redevelopment. I'm sure a lot has already changed since then, but the last time I was there, there was a Beauty Bar and there were high-rise condos going up. I'm not entirely sure yet whether both of those are positive developments, but I'm willing to reserve judgement. My least favorite thing about downtown is the way the Fremont Street Experience turns a city into a mall and blocks out the sky, but the light display is an entertaining enough spectacle in itself.

Other Lodging Options

As I said somewhere above, the main thing you should know about choosing lodgings in Las Vegas is that there are more than enough options to meet your needs. I tend to talk a lot about joints with gambling and a lot of ambiance because that's what I enjoy and that's what I've experienced, but you can find accommodations without gambling at both ends of the luxury spectrum and at all points between. If you want to be off-Strip, with gambling, but less pricey than, say, the Rio, you can find that too. You can even stay outside of town and closer to nature at Red Rocks or the Ritz-Carlton at Lake Las Vegas, but the latter has no shuttles to the Strip. For those with low budgets, there are plenty of motels scattered all over Las Vegas. In most cases they will offer the bare minimum of ambiance and amenities, but that may suit your needs just fine if you prefer to be away from the LV madness or if you don't plan on spending much time in your room. Make sure to research motels carefully, as those on and around Las Vegas Boulevard heading North towards downtown tend to be on the seedy side. Seediness may be a plus or a minus depending on your preferences, but of course ladies traveling solo should factor in safety concerns.

Planning Your Trip to Las Vegas in Four Easy Steps

Now that you have enough information to begin thinking about what you want and don't want from your trip, it is time to get down to the nitty-gritty. The following is simply my suggested way of breaking down what can be an overwhelming process into manageable steps, with the goal of helping you realize the best possible trip at the best possible price, with a minimum of confusion and frustration. You will still have to do bucketloads of your own research, but I find that done right this can be almost as much fun as the trip itself. The great thing about the research is that although there are optimal times to actually book your trip (more on that below), you can begin researching as early as you like.

Step 1: Identify Your Needs and Wants

I suggest putting your needs and wants in writing, since you are about to be barraged with so much information that you may forget essential points and waste time barking up the wrong tree. Even worse, you could wind up booking yourself into a hotel that is missing some essential ingredient, such as a swimming pool. Since your essential ingredients will be different from mine and mine different from the next guy, it is makes sense to have a list of your own unique preferences at hand whilst researching your trip. This enables you to better evaluate and make use of your resources and outside opinions, since the better you have articulated your own needs, the more objectively you can apply that information without being subject to the biases of a given reviewer. Never make a decision, pro or con, based on just one review or description of a hotel. You will be amazed at the extent to which two different people may have completely different experiences of the same place, depending upon their own preferences and the particulars of their stay in Las Vegas.

Step 2: Do Your Preliminary Research

You cannot possibly begin researching your trip too early, but your research will become more focused once you've accomplished Step 1. For instance, if you decide that you need to stay downtown because you have limited mobility and cannot afford cabs, your time will be better spent comparing and contrasting between downtown lodgings than reading up on Strip hotels that will be more trouble than they're worth to navigate. This is not to say that you should restrict yourself from finding out about anything and everything that interests you, only that there comes a point in your planning process where you must begin to narrow down your field of choices from the massive array of options available to you in Las Vegas and its environs. This is where needs trump wants and fantasy must sometimes yield to reality, as when you find out that if you simply must have a suite, your budget dictates it will have to be downtown or on Boulder City Highway rather than the Strip. Or, conversely, you may feel a deep and abiding need to have that full Las Vegas Boulevard experience and hence be willing to accept a mere room in the interest of getting the location you simply must have.

Although you will certainly begin to identify the most and least expensive establishments at this stage of your planning, know that prices tend to be lowest around one to two months before your travel date. This is why Step 3 is a separate part of the process, because everything is and should be speculative until it is time to make your move. Step 2 is your opportunity to entertain all possibilities and indulge your fantasies of the perfect lodgings and itinerary and then see how they stack up against the harsh dictates of reality. There will be a select few of you for whom money is no object, but the rest of us should use this all-important time before we book our trip to acquire enough information to distinguish a bad deal from a good one and a good one from an outstanding one. Keeping that information in mind and (for the moment) our options open, we then bide our time until we are ready to strike while the iron is hot. Times when you should never expect the iron to get all that hot are major holidays, weekends (remember?) and spring break, but spring breaks are tricky to avoid because they are staggered across late March and early April.

Step 3: Compare Pricing and Dates

You will already have gotten some experience plugging dates and locations into travel sites and seeing what pops up, but now you are ready to get serious. By "now" I mean ideally just a bit over a month before you want to go, when the hotels have sold some of their rooms at higher prices and now want to fill them. This timing is by no means an absolute, and if you have a chance to get a good rate earlier by taking advantage of a coupon or a sale, then by all means you should do so. In general, the better you have educated yourself, the better you will know when it is time to make your move. If you are traveling to attend a specific, you may not have much flexibility regarding dates, but if not, then do not finalize your plans until you have seen what kind of rates are available for the weeks before and after your first choice of travel dates. You may find there is enough of a difference to reconsider your plans, or you may well decide that you had the right idea in the first place. Either way, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you did your homework and are now finally ready to seal the deal. Remember, it's not just a trip, it's a project!

Step 4: Make Your Reservations

Now it is time to translate all your research into action and make your reservations, and there is no one best way to do this. The more willing you are to try out all of your different options and compare, the more likely you are to get the best possible trip at the best possible price. Like most everything else, a lot depends on how much work you are willing to put into it, and you will probably be inclined to put more work into it if you enjoy the hunt. I've been talking mainly about online discount travel services, which are your best research tools because the information is immediately at hand, abundant, and designed to facilitate comparisons. When it comes time to actually book your room, you may very well decide to go ahead and use an online travel service but you do have other options and it never hurts to explore them unless you simply don't have the time and/or energy.

In no particular order, here are your main choices when it comes to nailing down your reservations. Remember, if it is in your control the best time to strike is just over a month before your travel dates. Exception: If you are traveling at a particularly busy time such as the holidays, I recommend you start watching prices closely at least a couple of months before your travel dates and perhaps check in with a travel agent so he or she can help you find the most advantageous time to book around the holidays or spring break.

1. Using the information (including prices, dates, etc., call the reservations desk of your first-choice lodgings, inform them of the best price you found on Expedia, Hotwire, etc., and ask them if they can do better. The hotels prefer that you make your reservations directly with them, which gives them an incentive to offer you a better price, a free upgrade to a Strip view, etc. If you don't mind the social interactions required to make these calls, the worst that can happen is that they won't beat the offer you already have, in which case I would still suggest making your reservations directly with the hotel, unless (and it's a big unless) you are flying and have been thinking mainly in terms of package deals. If so, I still would not rule out booking your room with the hotel and making your flight reservations separately, only if you have researched flight prices and are sure you will not be losing money by booking your hotel and flight separately rather than taking a package. Again, it all comes down to just how much work you are willing to do. Of course you can also email the reservations desk with the same question, but I tend to think a phone call exerts more pressure and hence is more likely to elicit your desired result.
   
2. It never hurts to call or visit a travel agent, because they may have access to information and connections that you don't. As with the hotel desk, the worst that could happen is that their offers may not be to your liking and you will end up booking online. Las Vegas packages constitute a large part of their sales, so most travel agents have a lot of experience booking trips there and have probably gone more than once themselves. It costs you nothing extra to book a trip through a travel agent, as they make their money directly from the airlines and hotels. There are few downsides to using travel agents, just be aware that a good travel agent should be unbiased. If you feel you are being pushed to accept something you don't want, by all means make a polite exit and take your business elsewhere. A trip to Las Vegas is not something that should be arranged under duress, and you are under no obligation to book a trip to someone just because they have done some research for you. Yet another factor that may influence your decision as to whether or not to work with a travel agent is your tolerance for social interactions. Despite all the good reasons I've discussed to work with a hotel reservations desk or call a travel agent, I don't care for making phone calls and prefer to conduct as much of my business as possible online. If that applies to you as well, your best bet may be to go through an online travel service.
   
3. Online discount travel services like Expedia and Orbitz allow you to book a trip to Las Vegas as easily as buying a pair of shoes from Zappos, which is wonderful if you've done enough research to be confident enough that you are getting a good value. If you are an introvert like me and can think more clearly when you don't have to interact with others, online booking may be your best and least stressful route. If you are booking online, I strongly recommend you try using Sidestep. This discount travel aggregator allows you both to compare across different airlines and hotels and see how that stacks up against package deals, so it has a lot of flexibility. The disadvantage of using an online service is that you are not building human relationships that could potentially be very userful to you, so it is always a tradeoff but for some of us a useful one. Do bear in mind that just because you made your reservations online, this doesn't mean you cannot negotiate some type of room upgrade when you check in. As always, it never hurts to ask. I suggest that you make sure your account is in order and your credit card information entered into your account before you make your reservations, just so you can focus on the details without having to stop and fumble in your wallet. I also suggest that you stick with a reputable travel service that offers secure transactions, just for your own safety.
   

A Few Words to the Wise

If you don't want to be around children, by all means avoid Circus Circus and the Excalibur. Beyond that, there are few establishments in Las Vegas where you won't run into families. Prepare yourself to see children up and about at odd hours in the hotels and on the streets, but they are not allowed on casino floors or in bars so those are good places to escape them if you are so inclined.

Yet another thing you may want to factor in when choosing accommodations is the view. By no means should you assume that your room will have a Strip view, and by all means you should expect to pay quite a bit more if it does. You can get a sense of this when you review your lodging options on the travel sites, as they quite often list a higher price for a Strip view (sometimes referred to as a "full view"). Having said that, I once stayed in a room at the Rio with a view of both the Strip and the mountains. During our stay there were thunderstorms, creating a visual spectacle that I still remember as a peak experience. If you forget to take view into consideration when you book, you may still have a chance to upgrade at the desk when you check in, but the reservations clerk may never bring it up unless you ask.

This leads me to my last word to the wise about choosing accommodations, namely that if you are so inclined you can sometimes snag a bargain by opting to stay at a relatively new establishment. The corollary to that is that you may well find more delays and service glitches in a place that does not yet have its act down, but you may want to take the chance. My above stay at the Rio happened very early in that hotel's existence and I see they are now charging around $60.00 per night extra for a Strip view on Expedia, so I know I got a spectacular deal and I will always cherish those memories.

What Comes Next: Getting There and Getting Around

It has taken me several screens of information just to get your reservations made, so the next section of this essay (in progress and soon to be posted) will take you from your arrival in Las Vegas to your lodgings and beyond. My hope is to provide enough information so that almost anyone can minimize their travel stress and plan their downtime in Las Vegas in ways that are to their liking, regardless of their preferences. I welcome comments and suggestions to this essay and all others, particularly as a way of incorporating information about things I may not be aware of and accommodating the widest possible variety of interests. I do also plan on adding more references to this section and will be revising as time and experience allow, but for now I am looking forward to completing Section 2.