The Best Hotels in Las Vegas

Due to its prime location and sophisticated design, one thing you’re guaranteed to get when you stay at The Cosmopolitan is a stellar view. Every room has a balcony — a wonderful vantage point for viewing the city’s lights. Though the views are certainly a selling point for The Cosmopolitan, you don’t just check into the average hotel room when you stay here. Rooms are spacious with casual seating, a desk, and an incredibly comfortable bed. Every bathroom has a roomy tiled shower and deep sunken tub — also with a stunning view. To complement the resort’s edgy, avant-garde feel, a number of visually stunning and thought-provoking coffee table books are scattered throughout the room as well. Open since December 2010, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas has quickly become a favorite for those visiting from out of town and locals looking to spice up a few hours of their day. In true to Las Vegas fashion, the property has everything you need and those checking into The Cosmopolitan don’t have to leave the property during their stay given the many dining, entertainment, and shopping options on site. But once they walk into their rooms and settle in, they might be tempted just to hunker down in their private oasis.

Since it opened in 2009, the Aria Resort & Casino has been a leading example of the post-kitsch, post-theme-hotel era of Las Vegas luxury accommodations. As the 61-story centerpiece of CityCenter—a cluster of hotels, residences, and shops on the Strip—the Aria impresses with its scale, its up-to-date technology, its glass-and-light favored design, and, for a hotel with 4,004 rooms to look after, its surprisingly good service. Even the Aria’s standard rooms, and their marble bathrooms, are large, and the drapes on its floor-to-ceiling windows know when to open themselves. It also boasts eco-credentials: Along with Vdara, another CityCenter property, the Aria was the first Las Vegas hotel to achieve LEED gold-certified status. Its 150,000-square-foot casino dazzles even those who only occasionally look up from the tables. The nightclub, Jewel, is among the hottest on the Strip. And the video Game Room is state of the art.

Famous since its 1998 opening as the place with the dancing fountains (further immortalized in the final scene of the 2001 film Ocean’s Eleven), the 3,933-room Italian-themed Bellagio is a Las Vegas icon. There is a fantasy feel about it, with its five courtyard pools, its indoor botanical garden and conservatory that change with the seasons, its lobby-dominating Dale Chihuly blown-glass flower sculpture, and its eight-acre lake, out of which rise the fountains. Yet following a 2015 upgrade, it also feels as modern as any hotel on the Strip. The Bellagio still does a few things the old-fashioned way: Along with the expected celebrity restaurants, there is a buffet (a long-cherished Las Vegas tradition) brought up to modern standards with an all-you-can-drink alcohol option. Throughout the hotel, service is tops, shopping is high-end, the Cirque du Soleil production O draws ’em in, and—another Las Vegas tradition—a casino with nearly the area of two football fields makes it all go ‘round, which is no doubt why everybody has to be out of the pools by 7 p.m.

For families who want a full-service hotel and non-partiers who can afford it, the Four Seasons Hotel is, at 424 rooms, one of the few moderately-sized (by Las Vegas standards) upscale accommodations on the Las Vegas Strip. Without a casino and situated at the extreme southern end of the Strip, putting it out of earshot of much of the frenzy, nothing about the hotel connotes “Vegas.” It could be a Four Seasons just about anywhere: the same serene ambience, the same classically stylish rooms, the same attentive staff, and the same bending-over-backwards for children. One of the secrets of the hotel’s success, however, is that the Four Seasons is actually a five-floor hotel-within-a-hotel, with a private passageway connecting it to the casino of the giant Mandalay Bay Resort. The pairing works because Four Seasons guests have their own private driveway, entrance, check-in, and concierge service. And if the quiet pool at the Four Seasons should prove too tame for a kid with his heart set on tubing down a lazy river, the Mandalay Bay attractions are all available to him, too.

Thanks in part to a half-billion-dollar renovation, what was once the Monte Carlo is now the Park MGM, complete with a high-end hotel, several brand-new-to-Vegas dining concepts, and an outdoor pool oasis, all of which feel more boutique than casino. While the resort is in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, near the T-Mobile Arena and the Shops at Crystals, it’s designed for relaxation. Chic and modern guest rooms have gallery walls of art photographs, window seats, and vintage-inspired furnishings, and a few “Stay Well” options feature specially designed lighting, air purification, and aromatherapy to help reduce jet lag and promote good sleep.

Exclusive to hotel guests, the leafy pool complex features mint-striped loungers, where you can sunbathe while listening to live DJs and enjoying bistro-style fare from Primrose Restaurant. Reserve a chair, sunbed, cabana, or even a bungalow and you’ll also enjoy all the amenities of a suite. In addition to Primrose, current dining options include Bavette’s Steakhouse, La La Noodle, fried chicken eatery The Crack Shack, Korean barbecue joint Best Friend, and outposts of The NoMad Bar and Italian marketplace Eataly. In 2018, the property also added a hotel-within-a-hotel, when the NoMad Las Vegas begins taking bookings inside the Park MGM.

Built in 2009, Vdara, a condo-style, all-suites hotel, is a tower of serenity in a neighborhood not known for it. Despite its location, at CityCenter, just off the Las Vegas Strip, Vdara has no casino, no celebrity-chef restaurants, no glittering stage productions, no over-the-top pool and nightclub scene, and—like its neighbor, the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas (but rare for Las Vegas) no smoking permitted anywhere on the property. What it does have, worked into its minimalist, contemporary design, are spacious rooms, kitchenettes, washers and dryers, and a residence club–like feel that puts many guests in no hurry to leave. At 1,495 suites, the Vdara is too big to be called a boutique hotel, but with a high level of service (pool cabana reservations, anyone?), its size isn’t a liability.

Opened in 2008, the Encore at Wynn serves as the hipper, 2.0 version of the slightly older Wynn Resort, which is next door. The Encore’s 2,034 rooms, starting at 745 square feet, are among the largest in Las Vegas. The most opulent of them, the Encore Tower Suites, form a hotel within a hotel, with a separate entrance, complimentary breakfast for two, and Tower Pool access. The Encore has fewer restaurant options than the Wynn, but its club scene is superhot; it includes XS, with its lineup of celebrity DJs and never-still dance floor, and the Encore Beach Club, which in the evenings becomes the Surrender nightclub.

Both the Palazzo Las Vegas and its sister property, the Venetian, share enough facilities and services (including the largest spa in Las Vegas), and are so closely connected that Guinness World Records considers them as one in determining that, with a total room count of over 7,000, they are the biggest hotel in the U.S. (they are also the only all-suite hotel and casino on the Strip). Technically, though, the Palazzo, which opened in 2008, is a stand-alone, with its own lobby, two casinos and a poker room, upscale shopping, 15 restaurants, and a five-acre pool and garden deck. It also has its own vibe, which is less theme-driven, more hip than at the Venetian—although it’s not without its glitz, as one can’t help but notice when looking at the huge glass dome above the lobby. Spread over three towers, the Palazzo’s suites, with their sunken living rooms, are nearly double the size of average guestroom on the Strip (and almost identical to the Venetian’s suites) and their views, from the highest of them, among the loftiest in Las Vegas.

Why we love it: A bit of serenity in Sin City

The Highlights:
- Signature Jacques Garcia design
- Standout eats and drinks from chef Daniel Humm
- A pool deck right out of Morocco

The Review:
The award-winning team behind the NoMad hotels in New York and L.A. landed on the Las Vegas Strip in 2018, opening an outpost of the boutique brand at the larger Park MGM complex. With the NoMad Las Vegas’ arrival, guests have the option of staying somewhere with a warm, residential spirit and intimate spaces, while also enjoying easy access to all the facilities and attractions of the greater resort—think a hotel-within-a-hotel for those that might want a respite from the action. Jacques Garcia’s signature design translates here into sophisticated, muted rooms that range from classic kings and queens to four types of suites. Each is outfitted with custom furnishings and artwork, walk-in Carrara marble–tiled showers, free WiFi, Bellino linens, Argan bath products, and mahogany writing desks; as with other NoMad locations, some rooms have freestanding tubs in the main bedroom, so be prepared if you’re sharing the space.

While the majority of the dining, drinking, spa, and pool scene options are part of the Park MGM at large, the NoMad has its own key standouts. Chef Daniel Humm and restaurateur Will Guidara’s NoMad restaurant and NoMad Bar continue to showcase the much-lauded team’s dedication to comfort-gourmet fare and exceptional drinks, while the Moroccan garden–inspired NoMad Pool serves as a lush oasis during the day, then transforms into the JEMAA pool party—complete with DJs and table service—on the weekends. Also of note: the very first NoMad Casino, with intimate, Old World-inspired spaces for roulette, blackjack and Baccarat, set under a Tiffany glass ceiling and around the cocktail-centric Casino Bar.