With the second running of the Las Vegas Grand Prix rapidly approaching, hotels across the city have been dropping their prices. Casino and resort managers are acknowledging that interest in this year’s race is much lower than the inaugural event last year, for a couple of big reasons.
I’ve analysed the room prices of over 20 of the biggest hotels on the Vegas Strip to show just how much their nightly room rates have dropped compared to last year.
2023 saw Formula 1 return to Vegas for the first time in over 30 years. It marked the first time that three Grand Prix in one season had been held in the states, and was the most highly anticipated event on the calendar.
The 2024 Las Vegas GP, which runs from the 21-23 November, doesn’t seem to have the same amount of anticipation behind it, which is now being reflected in hotel prices.
The 2023 race
The inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix in 2023 saw the highest ever ticket prices for a Formula 1 event. A 3-day granstand seat would set you back over $2500.
And whilst the tickets didn’t compltely sell out, people still wanted to see F1 cars racing along the Sin City strip. That meant that hotels could hike their prices for what was looking like a blockbuster weekend.
As the race drew nearer, those hotels realised that still had a lot of empty beds to fill, so in the weeks leading up to the race they started cutting their prices.
The race weekend itself wasn’t without its issues. A drain cover came loose which meant FP1 was abandoned after just 8 minutes. FP2 was delayed by a number of hours, and by the time it got going again fans who’d been waiting in the freezing temperatures in the early hours were kicked out of the grandstands before it began.
The race itself was a straight-line battle of DRS overtaking. Verstappen scored yet another victory, and a last-lap overtake by Leclerc on Perez helped bring some excitement to what otherwise would have been a slightly forgettable race.
2024 hotel prices down by 65%
In a response to the outcry about crazy ticket prices from 2023, the Vegas GP organisers offered some cheaper options for the 2024 event. More General Admission tickets, which are the cheapest ones available, were offered for sale. Single-day tickets were made available in a bid to draw in more local fans. And a number of the 3-day grandstand packages came down in price slightly.
To make things more appealing to fans travelling from outside the city, hotel prices are also much cheaper for the 2024 race compared to the year before.
Below I’ve done a comparison of a 3-night stay in some of the city’s top Hotels across the race weekend in 2023 (November 16-19) compared to 2024 (November 21-24). The prices shown below are the average nightly costs.
The costs were taken on the 6th November 2023 and exactly one year later on the 6th Novemeber 2024.
As the data shows, average nightly prices for all but two hotels (Delano and Rio) have come down, in some cases dramatically.
The biggest decrease is the Aria which has dropped from $1633/night in 2023 to $576/night in 2024, a 65% decrease.
The second largest decrease is at Park MGM which has gone from $713/night in 2023 to just $311/night in 2024, a 56% decrease in room rate.
The average decrease across all 22 hotels analyzed was 24%.
Why are prices down?
There’s a couple of reasons why hotel prices are so much lower this year.
The first is that the inaugural running of any event, especially one like this, is going to attract a certain level of intrigue. All year long in 2023 people were talking about the first Vegas race, what the track layout would be like, how the cars would look running down the world-famous strip.
People wanted to be at the first event, partly to see the cars racing past the massive hotels and casino resorts and partly just to be able to say they were there. The second running of the event isn’t quite as prestigious.
F1 ticket sales will determine the demand for hotels near the circuit. As ticket prices fell dramatically in the run up to last year’s event, I imagine a lot of people were holding out to see if they’d do the same this year.
Those same people were probably also holding out to see how this season’s title battle between Verstappen and Norris would unfold.
The second reason is to do with the championship battle itself. Until the last round at Brazil it looked like Norris was in with a shot and it would go down to the wire. But Verstappen had other ideas, and his incredible drive from 17th to 1st mean he’s pulled well clear of Norris in the standings.
That has been a real setback for interest in the Vegas race. We were hopefully of a thrilling end to the season, but now it looks like it’s done and dusted. Max can clinch the title on the streets of Sin City. But theoretically, Lando can still take the title fight further, but only just.
Had the season panned out in a way that meant Norris still had a shot, more tickets would have been sold for the Vegas race and more hotel beds would have been needed, pushing up prices.
If you do still fancy going, at least you can get yourself a cheap deal on a nice hotel on the Strip for race weekend.
