Question of the Day - 16 April 2021

Back in the Strip's infancy when Las Vegas hotels were more like motels, many featured balconies that looked out onto the Strip or the pool area. But today, few Strip rooms have outdoor access and we can think of a number of reasons why not.

For one thing, Nevada has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation and jumping (be it from the Strat Tower, Hoover Dam, upper-level parking garages, overpasses, or hotel balconies) is a popular choice. Hence, most hotels don't even have windows that open, let alone balconies.

Another reason is almost certainly the climate: During many months of the year, being outside isn't a desirable option. And this ties in with a third reason: the additional expense both of building balconies and of air-conditioning a hotel with open windows or, especially, sliding glass doors.

Bugs are another issue. In the springtime when the weather's at its most inviting and sitting outside on your balcony to watch the lights come up on the Strip might seem like a pleasant early-evening activity, you run the risk of admitting some unwanted visitors into your room.

And, of course, this is a city that wants its guests down on the casino floor, or at least eating a meal or catching a show. It's well known that the policy, up until a few years ago, was to make the standard hotel rooms functional, but not so comfortable that guests would want to hang out in them overly long. Hence, it's not such a surprise that the non-gaming off-Strip Platinum Hotel on E. Flamingo, along with most of the suites at The Signature at MGM Grand condo-hotel, do offer private balconies, as does the new Virgin that replaced the Hard Rock, which pretty much just wanted you to party wherever you were, while the majority of hotel-casinos don't.

All that said, a few properties do offer this amenity, although they tend not to afford views of the Strip. And a word of caution: Several hotels we called stated that they had suites with "balcony views," which as far as we can tell simply means that they have large windows.

One casualty along the way was Harrah's, which used to have some rooms with balconies overlooking the pool, but those have all been converted to offices.

Another was the LINQ. While it was still Imperial Palace, it too had some balcony rooms overlooking the central pool area, but no longer.

A third was the Tropicana, where some of the original low-rise courtyard rooms at the Tropicana still have balconies. For a long time, they weren't available to be booked (only the tower rooms were being used), but in our latest call-around in researching this answer, we were told that those rooms are available again. 

Otherwise, two hotel-casinos do have bona fide outside balconies off their hotel rooms. 

The Cosmopolitan prides itself on breaking with the norm and one significant way was to include balconies with many of its rooms (the smallest "City Rooms" don't have them). The majority of them face the Strip, while some face Bellagio or CityCenter.

And some of the rooms at OYO have balconies, either overlooking the pool or toward the Strip.