Why is Las Vegas So Cheap?
Would you believe that Las Vegas, or Sin City, is a place to travel on a budget? Well, it turns out that it is the case. Indeed, the overall cost of living here is surprisingly low. Why is that? This is what we are going to see right now! So, why is Las Vegas so cheap?
Las Vegas is very cheap mostly because hotels are cheap. It costs $68.85 to live one day in Las Vegas. Living in Las Vegas is much cheaper than living in other cities. For instance, it costs twice as much to live in New York than to live in Vegas, and 40% less to live in Vegas than to live in Los Angeles.
Why are Las Vegas hotels so cheap?
Now that we know Las Vegas is cheap thanks to the hotels, it is interesting to understand why the hotels are cheap. This is the next question of this article. So, why are Las Vegas hotels so cheap?
Las Vegas hotels are cheap because they expect to get money from additional services such as gambling, room services, extra options, or food. Those extra fees can make the hotel rooms twice as expensive. If you are looking for cheap hotels in Las Vegas, you should stay Downtown.
How much does Las Vegas cost?
Now let’s breakdown the exact cost of living in Vegas. This will be made possible thanks to two different approaches. The first approach is a tourist one. I checked the cost of traveling to Las Vegas and I was able to summarize them in order to give you the cost of traveling to Las Vegas. The second approach is about the cost of living in Vegas. Once again, I found some really interesting pieces of data that I will share with you. So, how much does Las Vegas cost?
It costs $68.85 to live one day in Las Vegas like a local and $103 to live one day in Las Vegas as a tourist. This difference can be explained by the cost of accommodations and food. Indeed, tourists tend to eat in restaurants and sleep in hotels, whereas locals buy groceries and sleep in their homes.
How much does it cost to travel to Las Vegas?
First things first: let’s dive into the tourist approach. How much money will you spend in Vegas as a tourist? Well, it depends on the amount you gamble in the hotels of course. Since this is personal, I will not take that into account. I will only add up the prices of hotels, food, and transportation.
It costs around one hundred dollars to live a tourist day in Las Vegas. This includes the hotel room, the transportation from the hotel to the city center, and three meals (one breakfast and two meals).
To find this result, I used a website called Budgetyourtrip.com. This is a very helpful website that I already used several times in articles about the cost of living in Cambodia, Malaysia, or Ukraine for instance. It gives data about the cost of traveling to different places around the world. For Las Vegas, this website indicated that it costs $255 to live one day for one person. I was first surprised by such a high amount, but when I analyzed the data, I understood what happened there.
First, this website says that a meal costs $27 on average. In fact, you can find much cheaper meals (as low as $15). So I preferred to assume a meal costs $20. This is the average price I was able to find on menus. Now, a hotel room with breakfast costs around $50 on the Strip. Finally, a Monorail daily pass costs $13. So if you sum up the numbers, it makes $103.
| Expense | Amount |
| Hotel: One hotel room with breakfast | $50 |
| Food: two meals | $40 |
| Transportation: Monorail daily pass | $13 |
| Total | $103 |
Now of course this did not take into account the main activity in Las Vegas, which is gambling. Gambling costs cannot be evaluated precisely, but you should not expect to save money thanks to gambling. There are better ways to save money in Las Vegas, and I will tell you about them right now.
How to save money in Las Vegas?
Visiting Las Vegas on a budget is not an easy thing to do because of the numerous activities to do. But still, there are ways to save money in Vegas. I found out 10 ways to visit Las Vegas on a budget. This list will tell you how to save money in Las Vegas.
- Stay in cheap hotels
- Join hotel membership programs
- Visit Vegas midweek
- Avoid conventions
- Stay Downtown
- Don’t rent a car
- Don’t take a taxi
- Take the monorail
- Eat after 11 PM
- Avoid room services
1. Stay in cheap hotels
If you choose to stay in cheap hotels on the Strip such as Luxor or Excalibur, you can find rooms for $30. If you choose to sleep in Fremont Street, you can find even better deals for $20.
2. Join hotel membership programs
On the other hand, if you prefer to live in luxury hotels, the best thing to do is to join hotel membership programs. The hotel line you join will offer you discounts. If you are interested in hotel membership programs, you should check out Caesars Rewards, M Life Rewards, or Wynn Rewards. Note that this is not part of an affiliate program and that I am just trying to give you the best value possible in this article.
3. Visit Vegas midweek
Finally, it is interesting to mention the price variations of Vegas hotels during the week. For instance, it costs more to book a room during the week-end than between Monday and Thursday. So if you can, you should book your room at this time to save money in Vegas.
4. Avoid conventions
The prices of the hotels do not only vary during the week. They also vary during the year! Indeed, Las Vegas is home to lots of conventions. Those events are planned well in advance, and it is easy to avoid them. If you choose to visit Vegas during a convention, you will pay more for the same service. The best idea is simply to avoid the conventions. You can easily find the upcoming events in Vegas on the Internet.
5. Stay Downtown
Another great way to save money in Vegas is by staying Downtown. There are several places where you can stay like 4 Queens and the Golden Nugget.
6. Don’t rent a car
Vegas is a very big city. So to get from one point to another, you will need to use a way of transportation. You can’t walk from a point of interest to another easily. But you should not rent a car. Indeed, parking is very expensive in Vegas, so you don’t want to pay for it.
7. Don’t take a taxi
Same thing for the taxis. Taxis are very expensive in Vegas. The best way to get from one point to another is to book lifts or Ubers. If you need a car to visit a national park, just rent it for one day and this will save you money. And there are great places to experience around the city, just like you can see in the next picture.
This kind of landscapes may remind you of the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, or Arches National Park. I wrote articles on those places, so if you want to learn more about them, make sure to click the links.
8. Take the monorail
Instead of renting a car or booking a taxi, you can take the monorail. It will cost you $13 for an all-day pass and $5 for a single ticket. With the monorail, you can easily stop at the major interest points.
9. Eat after 11 PM
There are lots of restaurants in Vegas that offer late-night happy hours. The prices of food will lower for one or a few hours late at night. This is a great way to save money on food if you are someone who does not mind eating late.
10. Avoid room services
We saw in the first part of this article that hotels were cheap in Las Vegas mainly because they find money elsewhere. Room service is one of the ways hotels use to find the money. So if you want to be smarter than the hotels, you should avoid room service.
All those tips were found in the video from Creative Travel Guide. I only mentioned the major tips to save money in Vegas, but there are other tips you want to hear. If that’s the case, you should watch the following video!
By applying all those tips, you can expect to drastically cut the cost of traveling to Las Vegas. But now, what about the cost of living there? Las Vegas is a huge city, and there are lots of people living here. If you are one of them, or if you consider moving to Vegas, you may be curious about the cost of living in Las Vegas.
How much does it cost to live in Las Vegas?
It costs $68.85 to live one day in Las Vegas. This amount takes into account rent, groceries, activities, and transportation.
Now let’s head to the second approach: the cost of living in Las Vegas. For this point, I used another very useful website called numbeo.com. This website is a database that summarizes real people’s experiences and provides information about the cost of living in different cities. For Las Vegas, the results were the following:
A single person estimated monthly costs are $889.44 without rent.
Credits to numbeo.com about the cost of living in Las Vegas
But this was not enough for me. I also wanted to take into account rent. So I looked for more information, and I found the following video. Inside it, the cost of renting is mentioned. It costs $1,176 to rent on average in Las Vegas. If we add this with $889.44, we arrive at $2065.44. Now we can simply divide this by 30 to have the average daily cost of living in Las Vegas. This is the amount that is stated in the first sentence of this section.
This video will also give you lots of information about other daily expenses. For instance, it will give you the cost of gas, milk, bread, bananas, burgers, and other useful prices.
If you consider moving to Las Vegas, you can check these three different additional resources:
Is Las Vegas cheaper than New York and Los Angeles?
Now, this is time for the last part of this article: the price comparison. Las Vegas looks cheap thanks to what we saw before, but is it really cheap? In order to know that, we need to compare it with other cities. I chose to compare Las Vegas with New York and Los Angeles. So, is Las Vegas cheaper than New York and Los Angeles?
It costs almost twice as much to live in New York than in Las Vegas and 45% more to live in Los Angeles than to live in Las Vegas. This is due to the daily cost of living, and to the tax system in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Once again, I was able to create those numbers thanks to numbeo.com. Their comparison tool helped me to visualize the price differences and to analyze them in the best way possible. Here is what is stated about the comparison between Las Vegas and those two cities.
| Consumer Prices Including Rent in Las Vegas, NV is 45.77% lower than in New York, NY |
| Rent Prices in Las Vegas, NV are 61.32% lower than in New York, NY |
| Restaurant Prices in Las Vegas, NV are 24.93% lower than in New York, NY |
| Groceries Prices in Las Vegas, NV are 41.32% lower than in New York, NY |
| Consumer Prices Including Rent in Las Vegas, NV is 30.84% lower than in Los Angeles, CA |
| Rent Prices in Las Vegas, NV are 48.97% lower than in Los Angeles, CA |
| Restaurant Prices in Las Vegas, NV are 18.06% lower than in Los Angeles, CA |
| Groceries Prices in Las Vegas, NV are 22.87% lower than in Los Angeles, CA |
Why are there such price differences you think? Well, this is due to the fact that Las Vegas is located in Nevada, and that Nevada is a no-state-income-tax state. There are seven no-state-income-tax states in the United States: Washington, Alaska, Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Florida, and Nevada. Thanks to this fact, you will already save some money living in Las Vegas instead of living in New York, Los Angeles, or California.
Also, as I mentioned earlier in the part about the cost of living in Las Vegas, the overall cost of living there is surprisingly low! So you will save money on a daily basis. Overall, those are the reasons why Las Vegas is cheaper than New York and Los Angeles. Now if you want to get more information on the topic, the best thing to do is to watch the following video. This person decided to leave New York and move to Las Vegas. This could be interesting if you are in the same situation.
Anyways, I hope that this article was helpful and that you now know everything about the cost of living in Vegas and about what to expect from hotels when traveling there.
