Welcome to the Checking In series on Orlagh Claire where I review hotel stays around the world. As you most likely know, I have been travelling quite a lot recently which you can see over on my YouTube channel.
Next in this series is Elara by Hilton Grand Vacations, Las Vegas where we spent four nights at the end of March when we visited Las Vegas for my 26th birthday.
Location
For those that haven’t been to Las Vegas before, the ‘Strip’ might seem like a short street when looking on a map, but until you grace the pavement of Las Vegas Boulevard, you won’t realise how long the strip actually is.
With each hotel being a resort in itself, it can take around 20 minutes to walk along the front of just one hotel. Now think about how many hotels and casinos make up the strip, with restaurants, bars and clothing malls also dotted in between.
We were lucky to be staying quite central on the strip, just behind Planet Hollywood which faces the Cosmopolitan and is diagonal to the Bellagio.
The Hilton Elara is connected to Planet Hollywood which meant we could easily access the strip at any time and was the perfect base for us to venture out and walk around each day.
Related post: My first time in Las Vegas, celebrating my 21st birthday
The room
The Hilton Elara is known as ‘Grand Vacations Suites’, meaning each room comes with its own kitchen and living area. We booked the room as part of a deal (more on this later), so didn’t actually need the kitchen area, but if you were staying for quite a while or had a family with you, this would be a great place to stay for your trip.
We were on the 26th floor with the hotel going up to 57 floors in total. We had a great view of the MGM and Mandalay Bay, and could also see part of the airport where flights were coming in to land and taking off.
If you looked diagonally out of the hotel window, you could also see the huge Gucci store at The Shops at Crystals, meaning work was never too far from mind.
The bed was huge and insanely comfortable and I loved that we also had a little sofa area to chill out. The bath had jets inside if you wanted a fun bubble bath, and the toilet itself was separate to the main bathroom behind its own door.
For a studio, it was really spacious and had everything we could have wanted.
Our stay
This holiday was actually a little random in how it happened. My boyfriend rang his credit card company to talk about a points issue and they asked if he wanted to listen to a holiday offer for 200 free points. They offered a two night stay in the Hilton in Vegas for $200 with an additional two nights for free.
Him being travel obsessed, couldn’t turn down this amazing offer of four nights for two people at $200 in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip, which worked out at $25 per night, per person.
Of course we also had to pay for flights and spending money, but that was going to be a later problem.
And so, we ended up on holiday in Las Vegas for my birthday at the end of March.
We arrived late on Saturday night and checked in with ease, going straight to sleep. We stayed for four nights, each morning making our way to the Starbucks by reception (this is probably why I love Vegas so much – literally every hotel has a Starbucks inside), and checked out late on the Wednesday evening and were able to leave our luggage at the Bell desk.
Overall review
Overall, we had a very lovely stay at the Hilton and would definitely stay here again. It did seem to be more family and work orientated since it wasn’t a hotel-casino.
For the price, I would definitely stay here, but for the full Vegas experience, I would opt for one of the casino/resort hotels as I’ve stayed at the Excalibur before and loved the energy of the place as it was buzzing 24/7.
But it was a great base location-wise and allowed us to go out and explore the entirety of Las Vegas. I couldn’t fault the place at all.
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