“Hotel check in wait times are out of control in Las Vegas,” social media influencer VegasStarfish argues in a recent posting.
The video evidence accompanying the claim certainly makes a convincing case, showing nightmarish check-in lines, with hundreds of guests clogging hotel lobbies at properties owned by Caesars Entertainment.
View this post on Instagram
In a voiceover, the video’s creator says the footage was captured on a Tuesday—not during a busy weekend—and a “couple hours” after hotel staff had begun processing new arrivals at the standard late-afternoon check-in time.
“These people are each looking at a several hour wait,” the narration says.
Check-in Lines at Caesars Resorts Reportedly the Worst in Vegas
The hotels shown in the clip are Horseshoe Las Vegas and Paris Las Vegas, both part of the Caesars Entertainment empire, which owns nearly 21,000 hotel rooms in Vegas across brands and resorts including (deep breath) Caesars Palace, the Cromwell, Flamingo, Harrah’s, Horseshoe, the Linq, Nobu, Paris, and Planet Hollywood.
For months, eyewitness accounts on social media and online message boards have suggested that the problem of interminable check-in lines is especially bad at Caesars-owned properties.
Last summer, a guest attempting to check in at Caesars Palace chronicled an epic wait that started at 7pm, stretched into the wee hours, and finally ended with the guest booking a room elsewhere.
Even setting that aside as a worst-case scenario, it’s not hard to find online commenters citing 90-minute check-in waits at the Caesars-owned Paris resort or describing a half-hour wait to check in at Horseshoe as a mere starting point.
To be fair, Caesars rival MGM Resorts—which has even more hotel rooms on the Las Vegas Strip, at casino hotels including Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Excalibur, Luxor, the Cosmopolitan, and several more—has had its own trouble with long lines at the check-in desk. In June, for instance, computer problems resulted in extended delays for arriving guests at several of the company’s hotels on the Strip.
That issue was temporary, though, whereas the seemingly eternal waits at Caesars resorts appear to verge on chronic, owing to matters such as understaffing and glitchy technology for checking in via the chain’s mobile app and self-serve kiosks.
In the clip posted to the VegasStarfish account, we’re told that “only a few desks” at the resorts were staffed to handle the hordes of arriving guests and that the kiosks used to process mobile check-ins were “only about 50% functional.”
Complaints about technical problems with Caesars’ mobile kiosks, which are designed to let users skip long lines by checking in without having to meet with a staffer, are a common theme among disappointed guests who take to online forums like Reddit. Machines are frequently broken, guests say, requiring them either to wait in the main line with everybody else or to queue up for the few functioning check-in kiosks, generating long lines for something that was supposed to skirt long lines.
The VegasStarfish clip does show one area of the lobby that appears to have no wait for checking in: That would of course be the special desk set aside for guests who have spent their way to the top tiers in the chain’s loyalty program. The employees in this area “do not help with overflow whatsoever,” according to the video.
Us normies who pay regular or discounted room rates have to wait for heaven only knows how long just to put our bags down in the guest room we booked fair and square.
This gives the impression, per the video, that Caesars uses “low room rates to lure you in, but once they’ve captured your business they don’t seem to care about customer service.”
Frommer’s reached out to Caesars Entertainment for comment, but company reps have not responded.
Is It Possible to Skip Long Check-in Lines at Las Vegas Resorts?
Mobile check-in and express self-serve kiosks remain your best bet, provided the technology is working that day.
As View from the Wing’s Gary Leff points out, though, not interacting with a front desk employee may limit your chances for a room upgrade. If that matters to you, Leff recommends checking in via the kiosk, taking whatever room the machine gives you, then calling down to the front desk later if you’re not satisfied with your accommodations.
Download the hotel chain’s mobile app to speed up check-in, but you’ll likely still need to stop at a kiosk to get your key if you’re staying at a Caesars-owned property. The MGM Resorts app, meanwhile, has a “digital key” feature that turns your phone into your room key at many of the chain’s hotels.
Another strategy many Redditors swear by when check-in lines are long: Leave your luggage with the bellhop, go explore Vegas a little, and return to your hotel periodically to see whether the crowds have thinned.
What do you think? Have you noticed long check-in lines at hotels in Las Vegas lately? Got any tips for shortening the wait? Drop us a line or join our Facebook travel group, Frommer’s Roamers, and tell us about it.
