Coordinated 5-day sale offering new Las Vegas deals

Las Vegas hotels, restaurants and attractions on Monday launched deep discounts in an unprecedented five-day “Fabulous Escape” sale coordinated by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Nearly every Southern Nevada property is offering discounted pricing in a move coordinated with the “Welcome to Fabulous” campaign unveiled Sept. 4 with a 60-second television ad that aired during the first National Football League game of the season.

Deals galore

Among the biggest deals unveiled Monday:

Up to 50 percent off on hotel stays at five Caesars Entertainment Inc. and nine MGM Resorts International properties.

The elimination of the resort fee at the Strip’s Fontainebleau and Treasure Island resorts, downtown Las Vegas’ Golden Nugget and at the off-Strip Palms and The Strat.

$50 show tickets for Battlebots and “Potted Potter” at Horseshoe, Chippendales at Planet Hollywood, Donny Osmond at Harrah’s, Mat Franco at The Linq, “Menopause: The Musical” and “MJ Live” at Harrah’s Las Vegas, and $55 admission to two MGM attractions, including The Big Apple Coaster at New York-New York, the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. And Play Playground at Luxor.

The all-you-can-eat brunch for $19.99 at Guy’s Flavortown Sports Kitchen and $15.99 for the Tony Roma’s prime rib dinner at the Fremont.

Several discounts or upgrades at numerous Las Vegas wedding chapels.

The Las Vegas Monorail is selling a second ride ticket for 50 percent off after buying the first at the regular price and Papillon Helicopters is offering 25 percent off Las Vegas Strip highlights tours.

LVCVA President and CEO Steve Hill said his marketers originally suggested developing a one-day sale, but resort partners were so enthusiastic about the idea that they wanted to expand it to five days.

“They all universally liked it a lot and said, ‘We don’t think one day is long enough,’” he said.

“They pointed out that what we’re offering is not necessarily an impulse buy. It’s a bigger investment in yourself than something you get on Black Friday.”

He said none of the resort stakeholders rejected the idea and once they talked about it among themselves, they “took the ball and ran with it.”

“The only thing we asked of them is to offer the very best deal they could,” he said.

And, if the “Fabulous Escape” plan is a success, Hill said he wouldn’t be surprised if it is coordinated again in the future.

Hill and several resort leaders have said they expect group and convention bookings to be strong beginning in the fall and extending into 2026. But because leisure visitation is so important — roughly 80 percent of visitors are considered leisure travelers — it was believed that the campaign was necessary to reverse a seven-month visitation slump for Southern Nevada that got worse during the summer months.

Visitation was down 12 percent in July to 3.1 million and for the first seven months of 2025, it was off 8 percent to 22.6 million. During the downturn, the hotel occupancy rate, average daily room rate and passenger counts at Harry Reid International Airport all fell, although gross gaming revenue was slightly higher than in the first seven months of 2024.

Negative perceptions

Amanda Belarmino, an assistant professor at UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hospitality, said she expects the sale will effectively counter some of the negative publicity Las Vegas has received recently and that the numbers show the downturn isn’t as bad as many perceive.

“Sales and discounts typically do a good job of attracting leisure guests,” Belarmino said in an email. “More importantly, at this moment we are fighting a battle of public relations and perception. The fact of the matter is that we have yet to achieve pre-pandemic hotel occupancy, and this year is still far better than what we saw right after the pandemic yet no one was publicizing it at the time.”

Belarmino said the fact that gaming revenue is up shows the gloom and doom about Las Vegas may be overblown.

“The perception is that no one is coming to Vegas, and these types of deals help to prevent further bad publicity,” she said. “The metric I always find the most telling is gaming revenue. We have the highest ever gaming revenue in 2024, and we are currently beating that number. We have every reason to be optimistic and to think that we will rebound, however these types of sales do help to demonstrate that the operators are listening to the segments that say we have gotten too expensive.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.