| Always book my trip between Sunday and Thursday, so I don’t have to pay weekend rates. |
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| And last but perhaps most importantly, am a member of LVA and use as many Member Benefit coupons as I possibly can all year long. |
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| Change hotels as many times as I need to to take advantage of comped rooms and promos. |
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| Try to hit the buffets just before changeover time, so I can eat breakfast/lunch or lunch/dinner for the price of one meal. |
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| Ride the free shuttles everywhere they go. |
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| Book my trips in mid-summer and/or around Golden Week between NFR and Christmas. |
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| Take advantage of every sign-up bonus and collect every funbook from every players club, even though it takes hours. |
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| Buy a cheap cooler from Walgreens to fill with ice and use as a refrigerator instead of paying $10-$15 a night for a mini-fridge. |
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| Never rent a car or take a cab or Lyft; I’ve learned the RTC routes and take the bus everywhere . |
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| Never eat/sleep/gamble/party etc. anywhere I can’t use a coupon. |
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| P.S. Pick up the MRB at the Huntington Press office and save $3.50 on postage. |
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| Stay at a timeshare or one of the weekly/monthly suites with kitchens/kitchenettes where we can eat breakfast and lunch. |
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| Sit through timeshare presentations and (and fight off the hard sells) for the come-on freebies. |
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| Other (please tell us all your stories and strategies in the comment boxes). |
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| Re-read Jean Scott’s Frugal books from cover to cover and never do anything she wouldn’t. |
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| Sit at penny machines with $10 coin-in and only push the button when the cocktail waitress is around for my free drinks. |
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| Split meals, even if it means having to pay an extra-plate charge. |
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| Try to get bumped off at least one flight and actually plan my itinerary to give me an edge on getting bumped. |
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| Dig through trash cans for discarded coupons. |
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Analysis
We're deeply gratified to see how many poll respondents are members of the Las Vegas Advisor and take advantage of the coupons as much as they can. We believe that it's the most frugal -- and savvy -- practice available to Vegas visitors and locals, given that using just one or two coupons pays the cost of a membership. But, of course, we're preaching mostly to the choir here.
Hotel rooms are often the number-one expense of a Las Vegas vacation, so it makes perfect frugal sense to schedule trips for Sunday through Thursday for big savings on accommodations. But it also avoids the weekend mania -- huge crowds, long lines, tough reservations and tickets, hurried service, intense noise, heavy traffic, and the irritations they all engender.
The fact that rooms are the big budget items also explains the third highest vote-getter: The saving from changing hotels to take advantage of deals often far outweighs the inconvenience of moving around.
Beyond that, the rest of the selections are all common-sense ways to exercise frugality, and given our demographic, we weren't surprised to see fully 267 (8% and fourth place) of respondents using the buffet changeover play, 118 people (4%) taking the bus, 68 people sitting through timeshare presentations for the freebie rewards, and even six people actually admitting to the old Jean Scott ploy of garbage-can diving for coupons.
In addition, many of the two dozen comments (and another couple dozen on the poll-preview QoD page) share excellent frugal tips and tricks and are well worth reading in their entirety; you won't go wrong with the thrifty and prudent advice you'll find there.
