| Hey friends, it's Brandon Presser, Bloomberg Pursuits' travel columnist, writing this from a long-haul flight en route to research my next destination: Dubai. I'm sitting in economy, in case you were wondering—not all aspects of the gig are glamorous! Speaking of a lack of glamour: Has fun, flashy Vegas officially lost its glimmer? My algorithm seems to think so. Recently, I've been served an avalanche of content across Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube emphatically suggesting that "Vegas is over." Sure, most of it is clickbait, rage bait or whatever the heck you want to call the desperate need for a creator to earn likes and follows, but all of it is grounded in one kernel of truth: Visitor numbers are down. Way down. It's been a down-dipping slalom that started around the time of the inauguration in January and has continued to plummet well into the city's low season of sweltering hot temperatures. June had a loss of more than 400,000 tourists—that's a year-on-year reduction of more than 11%.  There's a strong possibility that I'm on the receiving end of this anti-Vegas content because I was recently there researching the latest edition of my Two-Night Minimum series. I had been a few times in the past—you know, for a bachelor party, oh, and for that time I worked as a butler at the Cosmopolitan—but staying for a couple of weeks allowed me to leave no stone unturned, be it an ethereally beautiful hiking trail only 20 minutes from the Strip or trying some of the incredible dining options that have spilled over into the "normal" parts of the city. I surprised myself by how much I thoroughly enjoyed today's Las Vegas. See some outtakes of that below. Although some of the negative discourse rightfully portends greater financial troubles across the country (Vegas is indeed the canary in the coal mine of American capitalism, given the city's economic dependence on other people's discretionary spending), the problem I have with it is how it paints the city as being a poorer value than other destinations. So, why is everyone picking on Vegas? | Yes, casino odds have shifted in recent years to further favor the house, with increasing table minimums and a reduction in the gambler take-homes. (Around 10 years ago, for example, blackjack tables along the Strip shifted from a 3:2 payout to less favorable 6:5 odds. Essentially this means a player was earning $150 for every $100 they bet; that number dropped to only a $120 win). But this shift largely has to do with the evolving casino landscape, cost-saving slot technology, a shifting desire toward sports betting and the proliferation of online gambling. Away from the gaming floor, the flak Vegas is getting for being brutally expensive feels unfounded. Take some back-of-envelope math using Washington, DC, another popular US tourist destination with an analogous low season, as a point of comparison. It also happens to be a city in which I've recently spent a significant amount of time. (It's been a weird summer to say the least.) A spacious and well-appointed entry-level room at Vegas' most unequivocally luxurious stay, the Wynn, costs $226 (which includes resort fees—we'll get to that later). There's not a single room in DC for less than $300 that remotely approximates the quality at the Wynn. In fact, standard rooms at similarly high-end hotels like the Waldorf Astoria DC will set you back more than $600 on a good day. The 3X price differential bleeds through all price categories. I challenge you to find a hotel in the national's capital that rivals the quality of the $109 rooms (including fees) at Vegas budget-friendly favorite, Park MGM. Even when tacking on the costs of Vegas' poor-value breakfasts plus a noticeable dearth of complimentary coffee makers in its hotel rooms, you're still not going to come close to approaching the cost of an analogous hotel in another American city. Restaurant prices in Vegas may cause the eyes to water, but I had just as many WTF moments in DC when the bill arrived, their Initiative 82 nontipping wage kerfuffle notwithstanding. (Though, guys, I paid $29 for a coffee and fad juice at a hotel breakfast in DC—it doesn't get much worse than that.) We can compare free entry to the Smithsonian versus paid attractions in Vegas, and I still guarantee that Sin City will come out as the better-value destination on the whole. The point here really is, when you tally up the numbers, Vegas is no more expensive or "bad value" than any other popular city in the US at the moment, and the reason it's getting picked on is that no one sees the destination as a luxury good. When balling out on a weekend in New York City, it's just "New York prices." That Vegas has been long perceived as the primo place for a holiday on a dime—and some people even came to Vegas and left with more money than when they arrived—hasn't helped matters at all. By holding to their reputation for offering too-good-to-be-true hotel deals, Vegas' casinos have spun off into Ryanair territory, charging surplus amounts, it seems, for even breathing in your room. Resort fees have long been a bone of contention (not just in Vegas) and have risen to $55 a night at many of the flashier resorts. There are many reasons this surplus charge exists, including as a way to reduce middleman payouts to travel agents and third-party booking sites who can levy their percentage cut only from a room rate. And to their credit, a lot of the Strip resorts do an adequate job of transparently acknowledging a sum-total rate well before checkout. But there are many smaller things that grind people's gears, including charging for room service silverware, minibar sensor movements (even storing your own goods in the fridge can incur a fee) and nebulous "utility fees" that some guests have reported finding in the fine print at checkout.  An appletini at Liquid Diet, the Arts District cocktail bar that's well on its way to becoming America's best. Photographer: Bridget Bennett for Bloomberg Pursuits I appreciate the economies of scale of trying to clean 4,000 coffee makers a day, which is one of the more palatable reasons that virtually no hotel room in Vegas has a Keurig or Nespresso. But more hotels need to do as the Venetian and readily offer (somewhat) reasonably priced coffee in their lobbies. I've even heard friends joke that they stay at the Park MGM because there's an espresso-serving Eataly on site. Simply put: If the city wants to be perceived as a higher-end product, then it needs to consider dropping the budget airline model. Travelers don't seem to whinge as loudly about spending triple the amount on hotel rooms in other cities when they aren't nickel-and-dimed thereafter, so here's hoping the Vegas resorts can better bake some of these charges into their room rates going forward. The irony is they'll still come out as the cheaper weekending option when compared with other US destinations. Connect with Brandon on Instagram. | 
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