A little more Nevada luster

New hospitality honors from a prominent travel club reveal that the upscaling of Las Vegas has continued unabated.

What's more, the luxury that has visited the Strip in recent years is expanding across the rest of the state, according to AAA.

Four restaurants and three hotels in Nevada joined AAA's newest Four Diamond list, which the group released Thursday. The Silver State now has 54 dining and lodging establishments on the Four Diamond roster.

The dining additions include Ciera Steak & Chophouse inside the MontBleu Resort at Lake Tahoe; Marssa at Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort; and Mix and Stripsteak, both inside Mandalay Bay. New hotel winners include Red Rock Resort in Summerlin; The Ritz-Carlton at Lake Las Vegas; and The Signature at MGM Grand.

The Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas made the list for the 31st time -- a state record.

In its dining scene, Nevada has made especially impressive strides, noted Michael Geeser, a spokesman for AAA.

Nevada has added more Four Diamond eateries in the last three years than any other state. Nevada's 24 additions best the 22 recent honorees in Florida, the 17 restaurants that came online in California and the 15 places that opened in New York since 2005.

Competitive pressures could be spurring some of the growth in Four Diamond restaurants outside Nevada, Geeser said.

"With Nevada upping the ante on hospitality and service, other states have done so as well," he said. "Other states compete with Nevada for visitors, so it's not surprising that tourist destinations like Florida, California and New York are trying to catch up with Nevada."

Nevada's 31 Four Diamond restaurants make the state No. 6 for Four Diamond winners in North America, behind Florida, California, Ontario, New York and Texas.

The state's strong showing on the food-and-beverage side makes sense to Patrick Yumul, vice president of operations for the Mina Group of restaurants, which operates Stripsteak.

The Mina Group maintains restaurants in markets including San Francisco, Detroit and Atlantic City, and Yumul said the typical Las Vegas diner is just as worldly as the diner in New York or San Francisco.

"They have the same expectations and they have the same amount of money to spend," Yumul said. "You have to deliver on every level."

Yumul credited Stripsteak's debut on the list to all the restaurant's employees, from dishwashers to bartenders. Every worker buys into the importance of providing excellent customer service, he said.

The latest version of the list shows another noteworthy trend: Some of the additions were well off the Strip and the side roads immediately surrounding the resort corridor. Four Diamond winners are proliferating in suburban Las Vegas and Northern Nevada.

The two previous lists of Four Diamond winners had no new entrants in Northern Nevada, with the vast majority of new honorees on Las Vegas Boulevard or on nearby streets, such as Paradise Road.

"This list really says that not every great property is located on the Las Vegas Strip," Geeser said. "You can go a lot of exceptional places in this state and get exceptional service. It's almost as if everyone has followed in lockstep to try and provide the same experiences people would have on the Strip."

Red Rock Resort represents that flourishing, off-Strip sophistication, said Ronan O'Gorman, the property's general manager. Most guests at the suburban hotel have stayed on the Strip in prior treks to Las Vegas, O'Gorman said, and though they demand the same level of service they'd find on the Strip, they're interested in a resort experience that's off the beaten path.

"They're looking for something a little different, and we will continue to try to exceed their expectations," O'Gorman said.

The key to Red Rock's success, O'Gorman said, is a focus on personalized, friendly service.

"Our 2,500 team members have made this happen, and they're going to be thrilled to be part of a property that has been awarded Four Diamonds," O'Gorman said. "They're going to be very proud of this award and try to protect it."