Every year is a big year in Las Vegas, with tourism records being broken regularly. But by any standards this is really big year–we just saw the debut of the super high-profile F1 race, the Las Vegas Grand Prix, and just before that, the opening of the world’s most technologically advanced music and performance venue, the Sphere, kicking off with a run of U2 concerts that has already been extended twice. The first ever Sin City Super Bowl is coming in February, but before that there’s one other huge happening–the December 13th grand opening of the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, an entirely new mega resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
(Read much more about the Sphere, Las Vegas’ new performance space, here).
Every August Virtuoso Travel Week is held in Las Vegas, and this is the biggest luxury travel industry convention in the country. Virtuoso is a consumer facing consortium of the top travel advisors (agents), and a Who’s Who of the world’s best hotels, cruise lines, airlines, tourism boards and tour operators. I attended this year, and the Fontainebleau offered a hard hat preview of the nearly finished property, and more details have since been released.
The Fontainebleau brand comes from Miami Beach, where the original hotel of the same name has been a luxury travel icon for nearly 70 years. It was famously the setting for key scenes in the James Bond movie Goldfinger, and has also been used to shoot Al Pacino’s Scarface, Whiteny Houston’s The Bodyguard, three lesser-known Frank Sinatra movies and television’s The Sopranos and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
When the Vegas Fontainebleau opens in two weeks, here’s what you can expect.
3000-plus room new casino hotels are rarer in Vegas than you might think, and when Resorts World Las Vegas debuted in 2021, it was the first new build of this scope on the Strip in a decade (I reviewed it in detail here at Forbes). The Fontainebleau is the biggest thing since then and occupies nearly 25-acres on a site that has previously been home to historic casinos including the El Rancho and Algiers. It continues a recent trend of expanding the Strip, the busy touristy section of Las Vegas Boulevard, to the North. Resorts World is the northernmost major property on the West side of the Strip, and the Fontainebleau sits nearby on the East side, north of the twin Forbes 5-Star Wynn and Encore resorts, and south of the Sahara, most notable for housing what may be Las Vegas’ best steakhouse, Bazaar Meats by Chef Jose Andrés. I recently did in-depth profiles of both Wynn/Encore and Bazaar Meats for Forbes.
At 67 stories, the hotel is the tallest occupiable building in the state of Nevada, and contains 3,644 rooms and suites. The parent company has its own in-house design
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Snow isn’t completely unheard of in Las Vegas as the desert valley gets occasional flurries. But a cutting-edge spa amenity—a “Snow Shower”—at the brand new Fontainebleau Las Vegas means that flurries will fall all year round, a welcome reprieve when temperatures on The Las Vegas Strip hit the triple digits during summer months.
Seasoned travelers are pretty familiar with TSA PreCheck, the service that expedites your security experience. Now PreCheck is leveling up with this new initiative designed to make it even faster and more efficient. To help address the rise in passenger numbers without requiring tons of new TSA workers, the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) created the Screening at Speed Program – a passenger self-screening service that allows PreCheck passengers to complete the screening with almost no assistance from human agents.
No city knows how to celebrate like Las Vegas — and Sin City was in full throttle for the grand opening of the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, a casino resort years and years in the making.
Las Vegas is getting a shiny, towering new hotel when the highly anticipated Fontainebleau Las Vegas — a project years in the making — finally opens its doors Dec. 13. And with it comes an all-new loyalty program for people looking to play or stay at the new 67-floor resort on the north end of the Strip.
Dubai’s home-grown hotel group FIVE is looking at potentially expanding beyond the emirate into the world’s largest hospitality markets. This includes a potential resort in party haven Las Vegas and in the conservative Gulf kingdom Saudi Arabia.
Go2Africa recently announced what purports to be the world’s most expensive wildlife safari. For $690,000, a family of four will visit six African countries (including Kenya, South Africa and the Seychelles) over 24 days. The luxurious accommodations range from tented safari camps to beachfront villas, and remote wellness retreats. The package also includes hot air balloon rides, gorilla trekking—even a personal film crew to document the journey.
High-speed rail in the United States may soon be a reality. The White House recently announced the allocation of $8.2 billion in funding for several key rail projects including a Las Vegas to Los Angeles corridor; a Raleigh, North Carolina to Richmond, Virginia, route; new service throughout California’s central valley; and more. The investment is a component of President Joe Biden’s “Investing in America” Agenda. While high-speed rail has been a popular wish among travelers for many years, the allocation of funding helps put the project in motion, with one administration official sharing with Travel + Leisure that the Las Vegas to Los Angeles route could be completed in advance of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. “If you’ve ever seen the standard of passenger rail service in Japan, Germany, Spain, or Italy, and come home and wondered, 'Why can’t we have these nice things?’ This is the beginning of the answer to that. Help is on the way,” Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, told T+L during a press briefing on the announcement. Buttigieg said that the lack of investment in new rail services over the last several decades is a trend that is now being reversed and that while change won’t happen overnight, travelers will see improvements within a few years. Over 35 rail projects were named as part of the funding announcement, including:
A $780-million off-strip property, Durango Casino & Resort offers 209 desert-chic guest rooms, a state-of-the-art sportsbook, and an elevated food hall experience you don’t want to miss.
The narrative in the month leading into the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix was mostly negative. If it wasn’t locals complaining about disruptions caused by the Herculean construction effort, it was “ordinary fans” bemoaning the highest ticket prices (by far) on the F1 calendar. And when these high-priced tickets and hotel packages didn’t sell out—many being discounted in the weeks leading up to the race—critics were all-too-eager to call it a bust before even seeing cars on track.
Following TSA's rollout of self-service facial recognition technology at select airports this summer, the agency is piloting its first passenger self-service screening in January.
There’s always something going on in Las Vegas, and that’s especially true now. The Sphere, an architectural wonder, is open for concerts. Fontainebleau, a 67-story luxury megaresort, will make its debut later this month. Then, in February 2024, Allegiant Stadium will host Super Bowl LVIII. But, of course, one of the most perennially popular things to do in Sin City is to gamble, and now, a new report from Casino.org, suggests which casinos may be the luckiest in Las Vegas.
Lakeside at Wynn Las Vegas has this week introduced a unique dry-aged fish program to its extensive seafood menu. The program marks the first of its kind on the Las Vegas Strip.