Las Vegas hotel rates for F1 week lowering to ‘commercially reasonable’ prices, fans say it’s too late

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – As Formula One racers roll into town, so may potentially angry hotel guests upset that their rooms are now a fraction of the price they booked them for.

That’s why several fans say they were discouraged from traveling to the race: the sticker price to afford at least three days of racing events.

Now, officials say price reductions are a way to accommodate tourists not here for the race.

Racing fans, like UK Resident Louisa Coates, wish they would have known about that sooner. 8 News Now met the breast cancer patient and F1 fanatic a year ago when she attempted to plan her dream wedding during the first Las Vegas Grand Prix this century.

The $1,500 nightly hotel rates commonly seen during the late 2022 presale were not doable for her. The dream of her two loves combining – Duncan, her fiancé, and F1 – crumbled in front of her.

“(F1) literally just priced us out of the market at the time when we needed to book and confirm our date for our wedding,” Coates said along Las Vegas Boulevard Wednesday afternoon. “You think, ‘Oh, it’s my wedding, we’ll pay whatever.’ But it just wasn’t– we just couldn’t justify that amount.”

The wedding is still on but with a different budget. Duncan and she decided to tie the knot a week prior to the race in the same city, but hotel prices now are a world away from when they chose the date.

Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Steve Hill anticipated F1 fans to fill “about half of the hotel rooms in Las Vegas” during the three-day racing event. He acknowledged the shrinking nightly prices during an early October interview, and 8 News Now analysis confirms it.

Looking at the cheapest rooms before fees and taxes, hotels inside the circuit – like Paris, Venetian, and LINQ – dropped $500 a night or more. Planet Hollywood dropped nearly a grand from last year’s posted price.

Those hotels outside the circuit with a view of the track – like Bellagio, Vdara, and Caesars Palace – dropped significantly too. One of the largest drops is from Delano, just a few blocks from the southern portion of the circuit, which had a posted nightly rate roughly a quarter of the posted rate a year ago.

“All of the hotel rooms were priced very high, anticipating that potentially those rooms would be filled by F1 customers. But, now that tickets have been sold, those packages have been sold, the city needs to fill the other half of the rooms,” Hill said inside the Las Vegas Convention Center on October 6. “There are 70,000 hotel rooms that need to be used for reasons that are not Formula One, and those prices need to get back to what’s commercially reasonable for our customers to come.”

Some of the largest drops were seen at hotels outside the circuit, mostly without a view of the track. Most rates remain well above what they typically would be for this time of year.

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