If you're looking for a gaming-centric experience, you're definitely better off downtown, on the Boulder Strip, or perhaps in North Las Vegas. The locals/downtown casinos are still primarily about gambling and value for the dollar.
As for the Strip and its changes of direction, we would say that it's going where the dollar is. Given that Las Vegas is the number-one convention destination in the U.S., can one really blame the big casinos for cashing in on the trend? Even Steve Wynn has tacitly acknowledged that he missed the conventioneer boat, as the core component of his proposed Wynn Paradise Park project is a convention center.
It was Wynn's rival, Sheldon Adelson, who first saw the value in conventioneers, courting them with palatial rooms, in-room minibars (revolutionary at the time), and his plush Sands Expo Center some 15 years ago. And why not? Adelson made his initial big money with Comdex, one of the biggest conventions in Las Vegas when it was still going.
Although some of his competitors were slow to catch up, MGM Resorts International now prides itself on the amount of convention business that it books -- so much so that it cannibalized the Zarkana showroom at Aria, marking the ascendancy of conventioneers over Cirque du Soleil. It also embarked on a massive expansion of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, powered by an expansive rooftop solar-cell array.
Given the rise of "convenience gaming" in outlying states, the steady business represented by conventioneers (and their corporate expense accounts) shows casino executives where the dollar is to be chased. Also, the trend started in 1989 by Wynn with his all-encompassing Mirage has resulted in casinos basically competing with themselves for consumers' wallet share: more restaurants, more shows, more spas, more shopping, etc. Combine this with the recent wave of nightclub and pool-party amenities and the gambling dollar simply isn't as important on the Strip as it used to be. It's bad news for the state of Nevada, which relies on gaming revenue as a pillar of the state budget, but it doesn't seem to be giving casino owners any pause.
As for the three hotels you mentioned, we would categorize them very differently. Aria with its 4,000 rooms and state-of-the-art convention center is definitely a "big box" hotel for business travelers. There is a strictly-by-rote aura to most of its amenities other than its restaurants.
LINQ is owned by Caesars Entertainment, very much an also-ran in the convention trade. With its generic dormitory-like hotel rooms and bare-bones amenities (casino-within-a-casino O'Shea's excepted) ... Well, we really don't know what Caesars was trying for with LINQ.
But we would dispute your classification of The Cosmopolitan as a convention-oriented hotel. While its glitzy casino floor failed to draw players in the early going, the Cosmo has improved its performance in gaming, and offers a balanced draw of gambling, dining, retail, live music, and rooms (all of which have balconies). It's become very much a quintessential Vegas resort of its time, although it had to survive a few difficult years to achieve that status.
Finally, we take note of the $1.4 billion expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center, a project that will extend the facility to the Strip on the old Riviera site. The moving force behind the approval of financing for the enlargement (funded by increased hotel taxes) was concern that mega-conventions would look elsewhere for space. It survived a near-death experience with the retail-oriented ReCon show, the Men's Apparel Guild splits its show between Mandalay Bay and the Las Vegas Convention Center, and Consumer Electronics Show is capping the number of attendees to whom it will issue credentials. One convention, the National Association of Broadcasters, was so hard-pressed for meeting rooms that it was booking them at nearby Westgate Las Vegas. ("Woefully inadequate" was its assessment of the Convention Center.) So for the Strip it's very much a game of keeping up with convention centers in other cities. It's also an equation of supply and demand, and demand is winning.
We'd like to assure you that the days of a gambling-oriented Strip (we remember them fondly, too) will come back, but it's just not so. If ever conventioneer demand for Las Vegas slackens, it will be a dark day for the Strip.
