Las Vegas: The Venetian Hotel
June 1, 2006

We have been to Vegas many times over the past 37 years and this is by far the best hotel we have stayed in. The rooms are gorgeous, all suites of course. The service was excellent, even have turn down service at night with small complimentry bottles of water and chocolates on the pillow. The food in the restaurants was all very good. This place is very large and takes a bit of time to get your bearings but just ask and staff are very helpful. The only thing we did not do there was gamble, except for slots, as the table minimums were just to high for us (minimum $15.00). In all, we would not hesitate to stay here again.

The Venetian Hotel is for lovers of Italian Style. Everything is the room is pseudo-italian. The size of our room is very large including the bathroom. The walk in shower is large but nothing compared to the MGM West Wing. The Venetial remings me of a people's houses that pretend to be Italian, but everything is fake Italian.
One big issue with the Venetian: The line for check-in was quite long, and our reservation was not accurate. The lady at the front desk did not care much about making a romantic stay with a king to a two bed stay. But what really made me upset was the way they treat you at check in with all sorts of disclaimers of sort. Plus paying $100 damage deposit and paying a lot of money for the room is kind of ridiculous. It seems the whole philosophy behing this is "Do not trust people, they will steal and destroy your place".
Besides that, Venetian is a great place to stay.

I had been looking forward to my stay on the Concierge level of the Venezia Tower of The Venetian for a long, long time. I wish I had done more research. Ultimately, a hotel with thousands of rooms simply cannot deliver the service that I expected, and this was disappointing. Parts of the stay were lovely, and other parts, not so much. I will say that the concierge level reception room for breakfast and cocktails in the afternoons was very nice, and definitely the best part of our stay. The check-in process was easy, and I was permitted to check in over 2 hours early. We received the room we'd booked, with an amazing view of the Strip. However, right away I needed to call maintenance since the air conditioning was not working in the room (they quickly dispatched someone to replace the filter, which helped quite a bit), and housekeeping since there was dirt in the bedroom and living room areas. I admit I was surprised at this, and disappointed when the housekeeper's response was "We are very busy today." Too busy to clean the room? Yuck.

The hotel itself is huge. . .plan for a lot of walking. The shops are ok. I liked the shops at Fashion Center across the street and the shops next door at Wynn better. The gondola is a nice gimmick, and some of the gondoliers are quite talented.

The biggest disappointment, however, was the overwhelming smoke in the casino and throughout the hotel. Clearly The Venetian has not invested in the filtering system that other hotels (like MGM Grand and The Bellagio) have. . .every time I walked back to my room I smelled like an ashtray. This might not bother some. . .but it certainly bothered me. Even the couple of non-smoking tables are a joke since they are right next to smoking tables. . .this definitely limited our enjoyment of the hotel, as did the fact that people can smoke in the shopping area, too.

Finally, I was quite surprised that NO ONE at the valet offered to (a) help or (b) call for help when our rental car had a flat tire (which the valet who brought the car didn't even notice!). Instead, they all stood around and watched, while a man in his 50s (a guest) had to offer to help my father (in his 70s) change the tire. This was absolutely inexcusable, and pretty much summed up the weekend.

There is no heart here. . .only smoke and mirrors.

We had stayed at the Venetian about 6 months after it opened and loved it. Comfortable bed, nicely appointed all suites, etc. Then, we went there for a medical educational conference in Sept 2005 and were shocked at how we were treated. When the front desk clerk was more interested in fixing her hair in front of us than checking us in, I knew we were in trouble. Now, I'm a fairly experienced traveller, so I did everything I could to be polite. We paid the conference rate for the room which was a bit under $300. Now, we specifically asked for a non-smoking room, and we were surprised when they put us in a dirty, smelly, run-down looking "hospitality suite." When my wife called the front desk to ask for a different room, she was told that the only thing they could do was come up and spray some stuff to make it smell better. The clerk was snotty with my wife and said "Now if I HAD a room, don't you think I would give it to you?" and then gave her some song and dance that the manager wasn't going to do anything about it anyway, so "I'm not going to let you bother him." Well, we went to speak to someone in charge of the front desk and she apologized when we told her that we were there for a MEDICAL conference and our jobs day in and day out is to get our patients to quit smoking! She understood and within a few moments had us in a non-smoking room on another floor. Besides that lousy room, the hotel and shops really smell nice, so from a nose standpoint, it really is worth visiting. The mexican restaurant on the indoor river was outstanding! We ate there more than once. Now if you are like me and aren't much into gambling, try a different Vegas hotel... maybe a newer one. Because apparently with the Venetian, if you are paying 300 a night, you never know what you are going to get!