As part of my first ever trip to Las Vegas, I had hotel nights booked for Friday and Saturday night, but needed a hotel for the first night that we’d be there.  My first thought is always to try and track down a stay at a hotel program that has a Best Rate Guarantee where you can get a night free.  Free is always good, right?

It took me 5 times for them to finally honor their BRG but in the end I finally got it.  I’ll have a full hotel review up shortly, but just wanted to give my first (poor) thoughts on the hotel courtesy shuttle.

After a great time at the American Express Centurion Lounge in the Las Vegas airport, we finally called over to the hotel to let them know we were ready to be picked up by the airport shuttle.  Unlike most of the hotels on the strip, the Best Western does offer a free courtesy shuttle from the airport, but you have to call to let them know you’re there.

Plenty of time to take some selfies while we wait an hour for our hotel shuttle

Keep an eye out for this shuttle. Actually… nevermind, you won’t need to for an hour…

• First call – 4:45 p.m. After being transferred around twice, I finally talk to Luis (?) at the front desk.  He asks me what airline I flew in on, and I try to tell him that I’m over in the D Concourse and not where I flew in on.  He says “That doesn’t mean anything to me”.  Since I was not really familiar with the airport map, I didn’t know how to explain to him where I was and frankly, he didn’t really seem interested.  Finally I told him that I flew in on Southwest since I didn’t know what to say, and he gave me instructions on where to meet the next shuttle, which he said was at 5pm.  I knew we’d have to hustle, so we quickly left the lounge.  Outside the lounge, I felt like we needed to take the tram back to Terminal 1, since I felt like that’s where a passenger coming in on “Southwest” would be.  We made our way down past baggage claim, then down ANOTHER escalator to “Level Zero”, and outside where all the other hotel courtesy shuttles were.
• Second call – 5:15 p.m. We waited… and waited… and waited and still no shuttle.  I call back, and he says that the shuttle leaves the HOTEL at 5pm (not how I understood him the first time), has a few stops, and should be their shortly.
• Third call – 5:35 p.m. Still, we wait and wait some more.  You know you’ve been waiting for the airport shuttle for a long time when you start seeing REPEATS of other shuttles.  Third call it rings and rings and eventually the phone just hangs up on me.
• Fourth call – 5:40 p.m. We call back and he says “Well I guess I’ll have to send her back out”.  About 5 minutes later, the shuttle shows up.

The shuttle driver (Inez) was very nice and answered all of our newbie Las Vegas questions.  When I asked her what had happened with the shuttle, she said that nobody ever told her to come pick us up. (Boo)

All in all, it was not a great start to our hotel stay…

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