Just before Christmas, my girlfriend and I decided to spend three nights and four days at The Venetian Resort and Casino in as Las Vegas, Nevada. This is an account of what I liked and what I disliked. All in all, it was a great trip, and a great place to stay. I certainly would go again, however, if the management was smart, I probably would not even be writing this. Hopefully, this post serves to help others in some way or another.

We arived late Thursday, checked in, and all seemed well. Check in was simple, courteous, and quick. You have to keep in mind, I am not a high roller, but I wanted to make this trip somewhat special, so I booked as good a room as I could find on their web site. Before we even set foot on the plane, I was called, and told I was on the top floor, twelfth floor I believe, so we were pretty happy, as this is as high as you can get in this particular tower.

When we got there, there was a small snafu, and we ended up on the 11th floor. I could’nt care less, but my girlfriend wanted to be up on top, so we made the call and had it fixed. This is when the problems started. We wasted a good hour waiting on someone to set up the new room, once we stepped in, it was nothing like the one we had seen on the web site, and certainly nothing like the one we had on the wrong floor. My girlfriend was bummed, so we had to switch back to the other room. As a side note, the room package we ordered clearly had a step down living room, as well as dual plasma displays listed on the web site. The replacement room was lacking the step down living room, and the initial room fully lacked the plasma displays.

Don’t get me wrong, these are minor details, however, I wanted to impress, and were this not my girlfriend of nine years, I would not have appeared to be as “cool” as I wanted. In this case, no loss, however, it would be a good idea to keep the web site in sync with what is really offered once you get to the hotel.

Aside from those small issues, the room was awesome, the view was great, room service was 24 hours and always on point, bathroom was impressive, hell, I could live like this easily. That being said, I certainly feel there were some deficiencies, and would like to point them out to those who plan on staying at The Venetian. Perhaps, management will read this and take note.

Don’t get me wrong, these are small details, but the Devil is in the details, and I would be ranting and raving about The Venetian, had it not been for the following:

First, the bath robes are a nice touch, quality and thick. I have to ask, what do you wash those towels and robes in? Is it a mixture of glue and soap? I have never, in my entire life, dried off with a bath towel to literally get a good scrubbing in the process. Sure, they are high quality robes and towels, they just feel like drying off with sandpaper.

Second, if I book a smoking room, I want a room set up for smoking. This was admittedly a non smoking room, and coming from California, it just does not feel right to break that rule. I know I was told time and again I would not incur additional charges for smoking in the room, but it wasn’t what I ordered, and I would have felt better to not have to feel like a rule breaker.

Have you tasted the tap water that comes out of your faucets? I am in no way a water snob, I am happy to drink most any tap, but your water tastes extremely bad. People drink, they come back to the room, and they need water. I will be damned if I am going to pop the little fridge and pay $5.00 for 9oz of water. Sure, I can bring my own up, but where do I put it, and how do I keep it cold? Might I suggest complimentary bottled water at any time, and perhaps a second refrigerator. It certainly would save the wear and tear on the waste baskets being used as ice coolers. Spring for the water, you can put your logo on it, and it costs you next to nothing. I saw two people carrying up coolers to their room, it is a clear need in rooms, fill the void, people will be happy.

In order to get to our room, we have to pass a security guard, whom asks to see my card key. I am then allowed to use the “special” elevator. Our card did not work for some reason. The security guard was 100% not able to help. He would not tell me where to go to rectify it, nor would he make any suggestions. I understand he is just security, but perhaps they should be trained to deal with some basic customer service. A simple nod towards the concierge phone wold have done me just fine. Regardless, we just did not use the “special” elevator for our visit.

Your web site lists certain amenities, one of them being a DVD library. In all honesty, I have a friend who has a DVD library that makes yours look like a NetFlix subscription. Used DVD’s go for about $10.00 each, were you to buy two copies each, of a few thousand titles, thats a very small investment to a franchise of your caliber. For a few grand in DVD videos, I would have come back and told all my friends how great it was to be able to get whatever I wanted on DVD. I think you have somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty to pick from, most are very old. If you list an amenity, make it worthwhile.

Ehm… No fan in the toilet area, this is just a huge no no in any book. It is, for all intents, an embarrassment waiting to happen.

I would like to distract from the negatives for a second and talk about the concierge desk. This is an amazing feature and your staff is spot on. I wanted eggs Benedict at an odd hour, and they took the time to call around and find me a restaurant in another casino. Pretty much any need I had, such as booking all our dinner reservations was handled. I can not commend you enough on how well your staff works that portion of your business.

And finally, I would like to close on a matter that may very well be the difference between me revisiting The Venetian or not. That being the coupons you hand out on check in. There is a $25.00 voucher for the Casino floor. I intentionally saved this to use on my way out, my one last $25.00 shot to regain my losses. I figured it would be a simple matter of presenting it to a table, and playing my voucher. Not the case. You know as well as I know now, it is nothing more than a ruse to get my personal data. The voucher is a ploy to get me to aquire a players card. Not so bad in and of itself, but the players card redemption desk is at the furthest end of the casino, and there is a huge line at all times. Even after tolerating the line, and the personal info disclosure, I learn I have to match the $25.00 with my own money. In frustration I simply littered the voucher, as it is worthless.

If you want to impress me, do not trick me, make it clear. If you really want to impress me, put a $25.00 chip on the bed when I check in, that would really make me feel special. And in the end, feeling special in a place where so many others are getting comps and tossing around $1000.00 chips like candy, feeling special is part of the draw. Any idiot knows when they are being conned, I certainly did, and I did not appreciate the waste of time to learn I was being conned.

By weekends end, I had spend my entire allotted $5000.00 almost excluseively at your casino and resort, sans the eggs Benedict at a nearby resort. Maybe small potatoes by your usual guests standards, but to me, it was a significant expense, one in which I felt some very small considerations on your part would have had me oohing and ahhing back home to my friends.

We will be back, for New Years, I certainly will be researching other resorts. More than likely I will stay loyal to The Venetian, as all in all, it was a great experience. I understand I am not a high roller, but fixing some of the above issues, maybe mixing a normal non watered down drink, and getting it to me in under an hour would have kept me inebriated enough to not remember some of the things I was not entirely happy with.