Most cities put their hotels next to the thing you came to see. Las Vegas reversed the order: the resort is the destination, with the restaurants, the pools, the shows and the spa under the same roof as your bed. Choosing a hotel here is choosing your neighborhood, your dinner reservations and your evening, often before you have left the room. That is the starting point of The Las Vegas City Guide, the 2026 edition we have just published.
The cover of the 2026 edition and its contents: five parts, from the Opening to the Practical pages.
What is in the 2026 edition
The guide runs to 111 plates. It holds 102 numbered addresses, 22 maps drawn on a single base map of the city, 30 illustrations drawn for the guide and three itineraries. It is organized in five parts: an Opening (the spirit of the place, ten facts, when to go, getting there and around, local codes), The Territory, The Address Book in thirteen chapters, nine Themes, and a Practical section that closes on an index of every address, sorted by neighborhood.
It is written for one promise, the right hotel for the trip you are actually taking. Every entry says what the place is, the detail that sets it apart, why it is in the book and a practical line: where, when, for whom. We do not rank casinos, and we leave out anything we cannot tie to a reason to book it.
Eight neighborhoods, not one Strip
Las Vegas reads as one long boulevard, but a stay is decided by the stretch you sleep on. The guide splits the city into eight territories: three along the Strip (South, Center and North), three in and around the old downtown (Downtown and Fremont East, the Arts District, Chinatown on Spring Mountain Road) and two at the edges of the valley (Summerlin and Red Rock, Henderson and Lake Las Vegas). For each one it says who it suits: the Center Strip for a first visit, the North Strip for the newest towers and a little more room, Summerlin for desert air a few degrees cooler than the boulevard.
Plate 32: the ten hotels of Where to Stay on the base map, with the Center Strip enlarged, the valley and the region for day trips.
The Address Book, chapter by chapter
Thirteen chapters, each with its own map: Where to Stay (10 addresses), Where to Eat (12), Where to Drink (8), Coffee and Early Hours (6), Shopping (10), Culture and Heritage (10), Outdoors (8), Wellness (5), After Dark (6), Experiences (8), The Calendar (8), Day Trips (6) and The Quiet Addresses (5).
A few examples of what an entry looks like. The Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas is a 47-story tower in CityCenter with no casino and no smoking anywhere on the property, 389 rooms below private residences: the guide keeps it for readers who come for the Strip but not for the gaming floor. In the Arts District, Garagiste Wine Room is a wine bar and shop opened by a former Strip sommelier, named a 2023 James Beard Award national finalist for Outstanding Bar, the only Las Vegas bar on that list that year. On Main Street nearby, Velveteen Rabbit has served a cocktail menu built in house since 2013.
Where to Drink opens on Atomic Liquors, the fifties bar on Fremont East, drawn for the guide.
Three itineraries
The routes use only addresses from the guide, and each is set on the days when those addresses are actually open. One Night on the Center Strip stays inside Bellagio, The Cosmopolitan and their walkways, with no car and no taxi, from Thursday to Saturday. A Weekend Off the Strip is for travelers who have already seen the boulevard: Saturday Downtown and in the Arts District, Sunday in Red Rock Canyon, from October to May. Four Days, From the Strip to the Desert keeps the Strip for the evenings and gives the days to Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and Valley of Fire, from Monday to Thursday.
What the guide tells you before you book
The Opening and Practical pages cover what a room card does not. A Las Vegas room is priced in three layers: the nightly rate, the mandatory resort fee and the tax. The calendar moves with the heat and the conventions: July has a normal high of 104.5°F, while October was the most expensive month on the Strip in 2025, at $220 a night on average. Nobody under 21 may gamble or linger in a gaming area, and glass containers are banned on the Strip sidewalks.
The Address Book at the end of the guide: all 102 entries by neighborhood, with their number, category and chapter.
Reading the guide
The guide is free and opens in the browser, on a phone or a laptop, with nothing to install. Its page on Stay In Las Vegas gives access to the download.