Living the Luxe Life

You may remember that I wrote recently about the Mandarin Oriental in Las Vegas, which was about to open. Well, it turns out, on a recent trip to Las Vegas, I actually visited the hotel, three nights before it opened. How did I do this, you ask? I was the guest of Virtuoso, a consortia of some of the most powerful luxury-selling travel agents in the world.

The hotel executives were happy to have these travel agents over to the hotel, even while they were busy preparing to open it because it’s a well-known fact that if you speak to one excellent travel agent, it has the same value of speaking to at least 10 potential clients. At least. For some agents, you can multiply that by 10 or 20. Travel agents are multipliers. They can send a high volume of excellent business to a hotel. If they don’t like a hotel, however, they won’t send anyone. They’ll recommend a competitor that they prefer. In the case of Virtuoso’s agents, they are dealing with some of the most affluent travelers in the world. It doesn’t make sense to send their clients to a bad hotel, they’ll lose their business. Got all that? There will be a test at the end.

The luxury travel agents of Virtuoso liked the Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas. They were very excited to be let in prior to opening and they were able to see a few rooms (the hotel was in the final throes of opening, so there was still a good deal of work to be done. In fact, they accidentally brought us the floor where the spa that I wrote about below was located and they shooshed us away very politely, since it was still being built. The spa already smelled good, though. I think it was of eucalyptus).

Anyway, I liked the hotel, too. What’s great is it’s set 23 stories above the street (below the lobby are condos), so you don’t get the street traffic that most of the Las Vegas hotels thrive on. There’s also no casino. It’s really a very, very swanky hotel set in a very exciting city. The views of the city from the lobby are just amazing and the architects were smart enough to take full advantage of these vistas by putting in some very large windows. You can sit in the lobby bar and look out at Planet Hollywood and the Strip and just everything below, yet feel very lush because you’re way up high in a lovely, calm environment, sipping a martini.

I can’t tell you much more except the service was very good. Mandarin Oriental has brought in executives from all over the world to open this hotel, who have actually settled down and moved to Las Vegas, because they’re planning on staying awhile. I was surprised to learn how important it was for Mandarin to open here. Frankly, I thought they’d set us sort of a quasi-Mandarin Hotel here just to grab some of the traffic that, in good years, flows through this city. But no, they have taken this very seriously by investing a lot of money and brainpower into it. In fact, they’ve declared this the flagship hotel for the brand in North America (was the previous flagship New York? Hope they aren’t upset about that in the Big Apple).

Seems Mandarin executives feel that this is a showcase for everyone to see how wonderful a stay in a Mandarin Oriental hotel can be. Face it, Las Vegas also gets a lot of visitors from Asia, China in particular, so they’re probably banking on grabbing some of their market, which knows the Mandarin product well.

If I ever get to the spa, I’ll give you a firsthand account, because I’m generous that way. In the meantime, enjoy some photos that I took that evening. You will see better ones from the hotel from sure but this will give you a close-up, real person account of what it all looks like.