Las Vegas

Currency

The price you are quoted is not the price you pay, twice over: sales tax is added at the till, and nearly every hotel on the Strip charges a "resort fee" of $35-60 a night that is not in the booking price and cannot be declined. Read the fee before you compare rooms, because a $60 room with a $50 fee is a $110 room.

ATMs & cards

Casino ATMs charge the worst fees in America — often $8-10 plus your own bank’s. Withdraw at a bank branch off the Strip, or better, pay by card everywhere, which works for everything except tipping. Never use the currency conversion the machine offers.

The bigger cost is the resort fee, $35-60 a night, added at check-in and not in the room price you compared.

Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.

Safety

The Strip and Fremont are heavily policed and busy at all hours; the blocks between them, and the streets a little east and north, are not somewhere to wander. The real hazards are the ones nobody warns about: 39°C in July with no shade, alcohol at that temperature, and how far it is between two casinos that look adjacent. Carry water, and take a taxi rather than walking back at 3am.

Our own assessment, not a sourced index.

Entry & visa

Health & emergencies

Required to enter

No vaccinations are required for entry from Europe or North America.

Worth having

• Routine vaccinations up to date

Getting treated

The care is excellent and the bill is the risk. There is no universal system, an ambulance ride alone can run into four figures, and an uninsured hospital stay can be genuinely ruinous. Comprehensive travel insurance with a high medical limit is essential — this is the one destination where skipping it can cost more than the trip by an order of magnitude.

Orientation, not medical advice. Entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history and where you have been — check with a travel clinic or your national health service four to six weeks before you go.

Food tip

The buffet is not what it was and the good eating is now the chef restaurants and, better, the strip malls off the Strip: Chinatown on Spring Mountain Road has the best food in the city by a distance, and costs a quarter of what the casinos charge. Free drinks while you gamble are still real, and the tip is a dollar a drink.

Getting around

• Walking — the Strip looks walkable and is not: it is 6.8km end to end and the casinos are half a kilometre deep
• The Deuce bus — runs the Strip and downtown 24 hours, and is the cheap way to cover it
• Monorail — the east side of the Strip only, useful for a handful of hotels and useless for the rest
• Uber and Lyft — plentiful, with designated pickup points at every casino that are a long walk from the door
• Airport: Harry Reid is 8km from the Strip, a 15-minute ride, and the busiest rideshare pickup in the country

Internet speed

Broadband here runs at 2.4× the global median of 128 Mbps. Mobile runs at 1.7× the global median of 110 Mbps.

Source: Ookla Speedtest Global Index · measured May 2026

Must-see

Things to do

• Walk the Strip once, at night, the whole length
• See a show — Cirque, a residency, or whatever is at the Sphere
• Eat in Chinatown on Spring Mountain Road
• Drive out to Red Rock Canyon in the morning
• Play the cheapest table you can find and stop when the drink arrives
• Go downtown to Fremont for the older, stranger version of the place

Nearby day trips

Say a few words

American English — local usage

• HelloHey / How are you doing?
• The bill, pleaseCan we get the check?
• To go, not eaten inTo go
• Fizzy drinkSoda
• The undergroundThe subway
• QueueLine
• Ground floorFirst floor
• Thank you very muchThanks so much

Religion

Christian majority, no state religion

Constitutionally separated from the state, and enormously varied by region — the south is far more observant than the coasts.

Do's and don'ts

Do

• Tip 18-20% at restaurants and bars — servers are paid below minimum wage and depend on it
• Expect sales tax to be added at the till, not shown on the shelf price
• Make small talk with strangers; friendliness is genuine and not a prelude to anything
• Carry ID if you look under about 35 and intend to drink

Don't

• Do not skip the tip to make a point — take it up with the manager instead
• Do not discuss politics, guns or healthcare with strangers unless invited
• Do not stand too close; personal space is larger than in Europe or Latin America
• Do not joke about security at airports or borders