Best Rewards for Gambling on the Vegas Strip
… And beyond. If you like to gamble in Vegas casinos and you want such gambling to be rewarded with complimentary rooms or ‘gifts’ (free buffets, free amenities, free shows, etc), then choosing which casino to play in is important. The rewards and the level of rewards given to players varies all the time, and this is an update (we go to Vegas a few times a year and we want the most for our play).
Here I am talking of resorts on the Vegas strip, because it’s often the case that downtown Vegas casinos, such as Plaza, give much more for your gambling, in order to entice loyal customers to go back over and over to a slightly less ‘famous’ area of Vegas. The same can be said of several ‘off Strip’ (and away from downtown) casinos and resorts (namely you usually get a bit more for your gambling in terms of ‘free stuff’ and rewards, but there have been sour exceptions, especially lately – more on this further on).
On the Vegas Strip you will essentially have 2 main resort chains, Caesar’s Entertainment and MGM Resorts (you can click on the highlighted words to find out which resorts belong to which chain), though you also have ‘independent’ ones such as the beautiful & generous Cosmopolitan, Venetian and TI; we’ll talk about them further down this page.
Our most recent experience (in which we gambled a lot at different resorts), we found out that the most generous resorts on the Strip, aside from Cosmopolitan, Treasure Island and Venetian, were those belonging to the MGM group perhaps excluding Luxor (and possibly MGM). By generous we mean this: the day after a hard gambling night (in which you have at least ‘recycled’ hundreds of dollars, which is easier to do than you may realize as you gamble), you walk to casino marketing or the players club desk and ask if you can get something off your bill: every time we do this the MGM group resorts (though some are still very UNgenerous, in our opinion, as already mentioned) give us something back (free buffets, free tickets, free entries or money off our bill if we charged any resort service to the room). On the other hand, Caesar’s Entertainment (Flamingo in particular, maybe because it’s so popular and often fully booked with young budget-minded guests) shrugged their shoulder telling us that they were nor running any particular promotion at that given time! I really want to stress the fact that we gambled (and ‘recycled’) the same amounts of money every time. However, what Caesars Group seem to do is send complimentary room offers in a much more generous manner; we talk about this on our best free rooms & rewards in Vegas page (second part of the page).
Some say that Caesar’s Entertainment group have offered more comp rooms (free rooms) over the years and that eventually they always comp rooms to those who have gambled: this is very much the case, since the MGM group tend to be ridiculously ‘tight’ with their comp offers (with their average gamblers at least). Moreover, their myVegas game is becoming less and less rewarding, as we explained on our our myVegas section. However, if you are a gambler, you need to evaluate the quality of the resort you are being ‘comped’ into as well as its food, shows, amenities and other items you could receive as complimentary. Then there are all those nasty little up-charges and those even nastier resort fees; early check in, late check out (Excalibur and some other MGM Group resorts do that, unfortunately, at times), 3rd WiFi device charge (Caesar’s Group) are examples of where your hotel bill can expand unexpectedly. Once Flamingo charged extra for leaving any bag which may be considered fragile or requiring care or ‘valuable’ (and this is subjective, isn’t it?) with their bell desk service (3 dollars per bag!); the excuse was that they didn’t want items to be broken, when in fact it’s simply an up-charge: we have never had broken items with any other resort!
In terms of free play, point play or express comps (or money credited), basically money credited back to your players card account as you gamble, the worst offender lately has been the BConnected Group, under all aspects; however, it is very easy to obtain free buffet entries with them mostly because – we suspect – their buffets are cheap to begin with. We talk about this ‘disappointment’ on our best and worst Vegas casinos page.
‘Standalone’ Resorts & Casinos tend to be relatively generous in that, being standalone, they want to secure a base of loyalty guests and casino players. Cosmopolitan is very generous in this respect; this, coupled with the fact that they offer real amenities (such as a 24-hour fitness center!), makes Cosmopolitan a very attractive option for Vegas stay (and it’s stunning too!). Venetian and Palazzo don’t have buffets to giveaway (they don’t have a buffet) but they tend to give you discount coupons for several of their resort restaurants, which may or may not be what you want. I talked to consistent gamblers and they seem to all say that you start to receive comp room offers (and we all know how beautiful their rooms are) after recycling several hundreds of dollars per night, as long as it’s in one continuous session. We have not tried it ourselves so we cannot confirm not deny this. Wynn and Encore often give free buffets (and that’s worth something since they are so expensive) at their property, though you do have to gamble more than you would need to at Excalibur, for example.
Treasure Island (TI) have a small but good buffet they can comp and they too are allegedly relatively generous to secure loyalty. Of course, things can change suddenly so we strongly advise you ask at their players card desk (ask about their ‘rewards’ system) before you start gambling away.