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If you’re looking to book a Las Vegas vacation on Marriott.com you’ll find that the chain will offer you 20 properties in the Las Vegas area. If you throw Starwood into the mix you’ll find another 6 properties on offer. That’s sounds like a good amount of choice until you realise that 16 of the properties aren’t full-service establishments and that only 3 are anywhere near the center of the Strip.
Marriott properties around the Las Vegas Strip
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas is an Autograph collection property and is the only full-service property Marriott offers on the Las Vegas strip and that’s not exactly impressive if you’re one of the world’s largest hoteliers…so Marriott says it will open another property on Las Vegas Boulevard in 2020.
The new resort will be called “The Drew Las Vegas” and will house both an EDITION hotel and a JW Marriott (so it won’t be cheap).
Here’s what Marriott has to say about its planned new Las Vegas destination:
Ushering in a new era of world-class hospitality, the integrated resort and casino to be named The Drew Las Vegas will debut the EDITION brand in Las Vegas and mark The Strip’s first JW Marriott. Anticipated to open in late 2020, the resort will feature nearly 4,000 rooms and suites as well as over 500,000 square feet of convention and meeting space.
As an integrated resort, The Drew Las Vegas will be home to a broad offering including a casino, luxury hotels, together with convention facilities, entertainment, nightlife, retail and dining curated into one cohesive guest experience.
That all sounds pretty good but I’m not particularly impressed with the location of the new property.
The Drew Las Vegas will be located at 2755 Las Vegas Boulevard South and, although that’s still technically “the Strip”, that’s not exactly close to the center of the action.
The Drew’s closest hotel neighbors will be Circus Circus and the Hilton Grand Vacations property neither of which are properties I’d consider visiting for a change of scene if I was staying at the Drew.
With resorts in Las Vegas now happy to nickel-and-dime their customers with outrageous car parking charges (and with traffic getting worse) being within a reasonable walk of places you want to visit has never been more important in Vegas.
With that in mind here’s how The Drew shapes up.
It’s….
- 14 minutes walk to Encore (the closest major Vegas mega-property)
- 18 minutes walk to Fashion Show Mall (the closest true mall)
- 35 minutes walk to Caesars Palace
- 40 minutes walk to the Bellagio (probably the center point of the established part of the Strip)
The walks to Encore and Fashion show mall aren’t too bad but I wouldn’t want to be doing the walk to Caesars or Bellagio in the Vegas heat.
You could argue that Mandalay Bay is only 5-or-so minutes closer to Bellagio than the Drew will be and that property seems to do just fine….but that’s not a good comparison to make.
The Mandalay Bay is next door to the Luxor (a destination property in its own right) and it offers a tram service all the way to Excalibur which puts you on the doorstep of the central part of the strip.
Guests at the Drew could get the Las Vegas monorail to the center of the Strip but the closest station (Westgate) will be a 17 minute walk from the property.
Bottom Line
If you’re the type of Las Vegas visitor who’s happy to take Uber everywhere or happy to stay put in one location (admittedly there are probably quite a few people like this), then the Drew may well be a nice upscale option to have.
However, if you’re the sort of person who likes a bit of variety in your Las Vegas schedule and doesn’t particularly want to sit in Vegas traffic every time you want to get somewhere then I’m not convinced the Drew will be for you.
Personally speaking I’ll stick to either the very well located Marriott timeshare (5 minutes walk from the center of the Strip) or I’ll find a good deal at Bellagio or Caesars Palace – proximity to the center of the action will always win out when I’m choosing a Vegas property.
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