It's a complicated issue and no one seems to have any answers.
The problem, from the club owners' side of it, is the escalating amount of payoffs for dropping off passengers. The kickback seems to have gone from the traditional $10-$20 for a cab load all the way to $70 per passenger. In an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, one cabbie was quoted saying, "It's a house payment if you can get three or four rides to a strip club each week." The article also stated, "One owner's business shelled out $1.4 million in one month paying commercial drivers."
As far as a law is concerned, a county ordinance prohibits strip clubs from paying gratuities to cab drivers. Though the law is rarely enforced, it's considered discriminatory by the cabbies, since it doesn't extend to limo drivers.
Our taxi contact, Dale Day, says, "If anyone was 'ripping off' anyone, it was/is the doormen at the hotels. As someone comes out to the taxi line, the doormen will ask where they're going. If it's to a strip club (or even 'across the hump to Pahrump'), they'll divert the passengers to a house limo, because the driver will give them a kickback. The passengers pay the $35 limousine rate instead of a fare from $10 to $15 in a cab for up to five people. (Meanwhile, if someone wants to go to Sheri's Ranch in Pahrump, for example, Sherri's provides limo service there — for free.)"
Now it seems that the club owners held a recent summit in which they agreed to band together and end paying the "outrageous" fees to drivers. So far, a Las Vegas Sun article claims, the industry-wide boycott is holding, though similar attempts have failed in the past.
The Clark County Commission is expected to begin discussing legal options later this month.
But the bottom line is that none of this has anything to do with you as a taxi or limo passenger. When you get into a commercial vehicle and tell the driver where you're going, you should be brought there directly and courteously. You'll save money if you take a cab, over a limo, to a strip club, which are all, except for Olympic Garden, in out-of-the-way locations.
