Free Nights in Las Vegas

Over the last few years, so many national hotel chain partnerships have been struck with Las Vegas properties.  Here are the highlights:

• MGM and Hyatt
• SLS joining Starwood (and before that with Hilton Curio Collection)
• Caesar's and Starwood
• IHG and Venetian/Palazzo
• Tropicana and Hilton

I hate paying for hotel rooms in Las Vegas since there are so many major chain partnerships.  That said, using Starwood/Hyatt/Hilton points for any hotel in Vegas usually amounts to a bad deal.  The one exception seems to be the IHG partnership with the Venetian/Palazzo.

I'm headed to Vegas next weekend with my brother and while we could have paid for a number of different hotels (Bellagio, Wynn, and Encore were all <$225 per night) why would we when we could stay for free?  With tax, that would amount to $500 in cash for a couple of nights.  We both have better things to do in Vegas with $500.

As I've done in the past, I redeemed a free night from the IHG credit card ($49 annual fee) and redeemed 50,000 points for the second night (unfortunately it's now 60,000 a night) at the Palazzo.  A quick call to IHG to link the reservations (both made online) and we were all set.

I quite like staying at the Venetian/Palazzo complex.  It is huge (can be good or bad) with tons of restaurant options.  It's close to Encore/Wynn and easy to walk over to Bellagio or Mirage for a change of scenery.  Plus all the rooms are 700+ SF suites.  It's hard to beat that especially when the cash rate for the hotel is $0.