3 Best Hotels in West Side, Las Vegas

This upscale, $780 million-dollar project is the next-level vision for Las Vegas casino hotels, especially those away from the Strip, offering rooms and suites with floor-to-ceiling windows and bathrooms with oversized showers. Although it was built by Red Rock Resorts—the leader in upscale "locals casinos"—this one breaks the template of older properties and deliberately blurs the lines between amenities for hotel guests and those for local patrons. The casino area is a giant boxed-in rectangle (so much for the deliberately confusing layouts of the old days), surrounded by wide pathways and eateries that take advantage of windows and natural light (as well as their own entries). The Bel-Aire Lounge, for instance, has glass doors that flow into the pool area. The George is another indoor-outdoor space, one in which the sports book with giant screens is blended with a restaurant that is this property's version of the 24-hour coffee shop. Eat Your Heart Out is a "food hall" with theme park-like facades on each outlet and shared tables in the open as well as "indoor" seating inside its Hawaiian, Asian, and pasta shops. The property has been so successful since its late-2023 opening that a $116 million expansion is already underway.

This is where the whole "locals casinos" trend began, when a one-time Bingo Palace evolved into Palace Station, now with fully remodeled rooms that, while modern, are still pretty basic and not large. But good luck finding any vestiges of the 1970s and '80s original beyond the basic footprint and The Oyster Bar, a sentimental favorite. Most of the interior has been remodeled to keep Palace Station in line with the newer, more upscale sister properties that the Station Casinos brand has grown into. The original motel rooms were razed to become a casino expansion, which included a new pool area with cabanas. A corner of the property was expanded for two spacious new restaurants and, above them, a nine-screen movie theater with a "wine and dine while you watch" concept. Palace now has a balance of casino-operated restaurants (The Brass Fork coffee shop and Charcoal Room steakhouse) and leased-out spaces, including new branches of two local favorites: Lindo Michoacan for Mexican food, and China Mama, which took over the bright, airy space originally given to The Boathouse Asian Eatery. It's next door to Tailgate Social, where the sports bar–themed atmosphere and menu come with sunlight and windows uncommon to a casino. One thing that hasn't changed is the easy access of the sports book just inside the west entry, making it easy to participate in the company's famous football contest.

This sprawling resort with spacious rooms just west of the Strip was pioneering in its appeal to locals and visitors but fell on post-pandemic hard times before new owners, Dreamscape Cos., started sinking money into a complete renovation, but room renovations are still ongoing. By the end of 2024, the $350-million refurbishment was evident on the casino floor, with new furniture, carpeting, and wall coverings—even the new Lapa Lounge at the center of it all. The Rio's pioneering buffet became a permanent casualty of the pandemic (as did most Las Vegas buffets), but was replaced by the Canteen Food Hall, with sushi, ramen, and burgers among the choices. The sprawling pool area, another stand-out of the old days, received a complete overhaul as well. And after a five-year absence, the 51st-floor VooDoo Lounge reopened in early 2025. More than half of the rooms had been remodeled by the end of 2024 as well. The standard so-called "suites" don't actually have separate bedrooms, but they're spacious (at least 600 square feet), and higher-end units have double whirlpool tubs, wet bars, and other cushy touches. And the place makes up for its distance to the Strip by having plenty of entertainment options under one roof, including Penn & Teller, a family-friendly, old-school variety revue called Wow!, and a branch of New York's Comedy Cellar.