The imminent “fight of the century” at the MGM Grand Garden Arena has caused room rates on the Strip to skyrocket recently, but it seems that some, at least, have now dropped.
At one point last week, the MGM Grand’s website was selling a certain type of room for a whopping $1,600 this Friday night, the eve before Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao’s epic boxing match on Saturday.
The same type of room cost about $500 on the property’s website Thursday evening.
That’s surely good news for fans still searching for a place to sleep on the Strip, but it’s not necessarily a sign that hotels are having trouble attracting guests. In fact, MGM Resorts spokeswoman Mary Hynes said the company expects to have no problem filling its hotels this weekend.
“There is some fluctuation going on in pricing for some of our rooms, which is expected before a major event,” Hynes said.
Similarly, VEGAS.com CEO Steven McArthur cautioned that room rates fluctuate for a variety of reasons, and the fact that they might cost less right now doesn’t reflect what hotels have charged most people for that night. He said there’s “incredibly healthy demand” for this weekend.
“Just because the price that you saw on a search you did five minutes ago is ‘X,’ doesn’t tell you anything about what the average price was for the room sold in the last 24 hours, or the last seven days,” McArthur said. “You can’t draw a trend conclusion from it, because you’re not seeing the whole picture.”
As of Thursday evening, VEGAS.com was showing some rooms on the Strip available for Saturday in the $200-$500 range, but others still cost around $1,000. VEGAS.com is partially owned by Brian Greenspun, editor and publisher of the Las Vegas Sun.