Any recommendations for booking a hotel

[zenyata]

Wondering if anyone had any suggestions for getting a fair deal on a hotel for a night in Las Vegas, NV.  My SO and I will be visiting briefly at the end of this month.  It's just a stopover / kicking off a bit of a driving tour of the southwest ultimately meeting some friends out in LA area.

Our flight will be arriving around 9 pm local time and I need to pick up a rental car the next morning (it wasn't worth paying an extra day on the car just to have it sit at the hotel for the night).  So... since I figure we'll have some time to kill at night I'd try to find something close to downtown but easy to get back to the airport to get the car in the morning.

I've tried some of the on-line services like Priceline etc. just to get an idea of the price for a night and they all seem way high compared to the (possibly dated) advice from some friends who insist that "hotels are cheap out there - they want you to stay cheap so you will drop the money gambling..."   Well, I'm just not seeing that - possibly because it's a seasonal thing (spring break period) and maybe because it's a weekend (we arrive Friday night).

I travel and book hotels a fair bit for work but typically under special circumstances / gov't allowance rates so I don't really have much recent experience with finding decent hotel rates for vacation travel - we typically camp on vacation and will be doing that for most of rest of the trip but figured we'd live large for a night in Vegas :)

Any suggestions / recommendations for how to find a discounted room at a decent place in the thick of it all would be much appreciated...  Thanks in advance !

(Moderators - feel free to move this post if necessary - probably could go under either the Recommendations section or Ask a Mustachian... thought I'd give it a go here for no particular reason...)

[jda1984]

I don't have any hotel specific tips, but it's probably not worth going back to the airport to get the car.  Often there are rental locations not at the airport that don't have the additional fees the airport ones do.  Sometimes it can be cheaper to take a cab from the airport to a rental location if you plan to keep the car for more than a couple days.

[RH]

We stay at the Mirage...great location, decent rates, best pool in Vegas! The days of 'dirt cheap' Vegas are done with if you ask me.

[Spork]

you might try vegas.com.   I think LV is sort of special in it's own self promotion.  I think you can still find reasonably good deals (but haven't actually been there in a loooong time.)

[lise]

Maybe you should look to get a free night by applying for a new hotel credit card. 
I can't remember the last time I paid for a hotel.  (I'm a credit card churner).

[ClaycordJCA]

Try the hotel websites. You often get the best rate since they don't have to share with a middleman such as expedia, etc.  compare prices on rental cars between the hotel and airport. In some instances, there are additional fees/taxes at the airport that you might avoid at the hotel. Again, best to check the rental car company's web sites - saved some money last trip to Denver when we booked thru Hertz rather than AAA. 

[ejw001]

You could consider staying downtown (Fremont Street).  Those hotels are older and it's definitely a different experience, but significantly cheaper.

[arebelspy]

How cheap are you looking?  The standard rates at some of them range from like $35-50 a night depending on when you're doing, no trying to find a "deal" needed.  Have you looked at just the standard rates, they're pretty cheap already...