Vegas4Visitors.com turns 10 years old in September of 2008! To celebrate, I’m doing a series of columns about the city and my decade’s worth of covering it.
When you write about anyplace for as long as I have you see a lot change, and a lot stay the same. The last 10 years have seen Las Vegas reinvent itself yet again but is it all good? Of course not. As much as I love the city, there’s plenty about it that annoys me.
So let’s take a look at the Top 10 Ways I Would Change Las Vegas:
1. Make Everything Cheaper
Las Vegas has gotten too expensive. From rooms to restaurants to clubs and everything in between, the average Vegas visitor has been priced right off The Strip. So the first thing I’d do is make everything cheaper. Vegas casinos and hotels could still make plenty of money and in fact would probably be able to weather economic storms like the one we’re having now better. If people still considered Vegas to be affordable, they may not be staying away when times get tough.
2. Make Gambling More Rewarding
I’m not the only one who has gotten a sense that the slots have gotten tighter in recent years and that’s not only annoying but it’s a bummer. Gambling should be fun and losing all the time is not fun. Casinos are a business and they should make money but perhaps returning a little bit more of that money to the people who keep the lights on will keep them coming back for more.
3. Bring Back the Fun
Vegas used to be a city that inspired eye-popping, giggle prone awe. Each new casino hotel tried to outdo the last for its outrageousness factor and it was great silly fun everywhere you looked. Now the city has gotten all upscale and serious and it just isn’t as amusing to go there as it used to be. Open another radically themed hotel and I can practically guarantee it will be a hit.
4. Abolish Multiple Check-In Lines
It used to be standard at most hotels that there would be a single line for checking in and out and you’d simply go to the next available agent when you got to the head of it. More and more these days they have switched to multiple lines, one for each agent, which is a huge pet peeve of mine because I always choose the slowest moving line. They should be banned.
5. Invest in Transportation
The Monorail was a good idea – well, it was an interesting idea – but it has done nothing to help move people around The Strip and as a result it takes way too long to get anywhere whether you’re walking, driving, bussing, or cabbing. The casinos should pool their resources and throw a couple billion dollars at making it easier to get around the city (including Downtown and the airport).
6. Remember Your History
Las Vegas has one of the most rich and entertaining histories of any city in the world, and yet every year more and more of it disappears without so much as a backward glance. I’m not saying keep the old, worn-out, outdated hotels but find a way to honor the past through museums, artifact displays, or even retro nods in casino design. People will love it.
7. Have Some Class
This one is less about the city and more about the people who visit it, but I’ve grown increasingly weary with the “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” ethos that many people seem to take as permission to be drunk, loud, obnoxious, rude, and just plain old stupid. Is throwing up in a planter at 4am your idea of fun? If so, stay at home – the rest of us have gone through puberty.
8. Broaden the Entertainment Options
These days it seems your Vegas entertainment options come in 1 of 4 packages: outrageously expensive headliner shows; Broadway transplants; Cirque du Soleil; and everything else. Most of that everything else is not very good and usually not worth the ticket prices. Find some new, creative people to get into the Las Vegas showrooms – we need some fresh blood.
9. Remember That Not Everyone Reads Gourmet Magazine
I love food, don’t get me wrong. But I’m usually happier with a $3 burger from a roadside stand as I am with a $75 artistic presentation of some food that I can’t pronounce. Unfortunately the $75 thing I can’t pronounce is much more prominent these days and it seems again here that us average Joes have been kicked out of the kitchen. And I’m not just talking about price.
10. Be Bold
The people who drove the development of Las Vegas were visionaries. These days the people driving the development are corporations and as a general rule corporations don’t take risks. And no, spending billions of dollars is not the kind of risk I’m talking about. They should be bold, be creative, be daring, be willing to change the game instead of just play by the same old rules. It’s the only way Las Vegas will continue to grow in a way that will remain relevant to the people who really made it what it is: the tourists.
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