A few days before opening night, TV cameras followed British restaurateur and reality TV star Lisa Vanderpump around the lobby of her new namesake hotel located on perhaps the most-prime corner of the Las Vegas Strip. In every corner, maintenance workers put the final touches on the lavish boutique property.
The Vanderpump Hotel was so brand new, in fact, that it wasn’t yet identified correctly on rideshare apps. Yet, Vanderpump’s likeness and branding—especially her Pomeranian—were already omnipresent onsite at the former The Cromwell hotel.
Bottles of her own rose and vodka were for sale. The intimate and playfully designed rooms included elements of lavender and steel—a Vanderpump touch, for sure.
As our Caesars Meetings fam commenced that same night at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in nearby Paris Las Vegas, a marriage proposal unfolded a few tables over from us, right as the sun descended in the sky behind the towering facades of Caesars Palace and the Bellagio.
Sommelier Patrick Haro arrived with what looked like an inch-thick binder. It was the wine list.
“I have a 54-page wine list with 1,200-plus labels,” Haro said, proceeding to flip through the laminated sheets for a few of our tablemates.
On the 50-Yard Line
Just for us, Bugsy & Meyer’s Steakhouse at the Flamingo opened up for breakfast the next morning, where Director of Catering/Convention Services Matt Nitsche met us for an old-school hospitality industry conversation.
“We’re at the 50-yard line of the Las Vegas Strip,” he said as we sat down.
Nitsche was on his third career tenure with the Caesars family. He was on hand when Paris opened in 1999. Our server, Jose, had been with the company 45 years. He and Nitsche traded memories of the old Vegas, rattling off what used to exist at various spots decades earlier, which led to a repartee on the value of longtime employees. Nitsche gave several examples.
“Our director of housekeeping takes great pride in crafting small little VIP stands with bottles of water for each of our seven-star guests,” Nitsche said. “She does that on her own. ... So, it’s those smaller touches, I think, at a property like this with 4,000 rooms that she’s able to insert her passion into every one of our VIP folks. I think that's really cool.”
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Surprisingly, I soon discovered Flamingo has the only swim-up bar in Vegas. From the DJ booth, we viewed the entirety of the multiple pool decks, all of which regularly catered to group events.
The Flamingo was still the oldest spot on the strip, constantly reinventing itself and its spaces, so it made for a great complement to a few newly designed epicenters of entertainment.
Open since May 2026, OMNIA Dayclub & Skybar is a new complex built from the ground up by Tao Group Hospitality. Spanning 46,000 square feet directly on the Strip, the venue features private cabanas and exclusive VIP plunge pools along the perimeter, plus a European-party-resort influence, while also connecting to the already-iconic OMNIA Nightclub by a dedicated 80-foot bridge, bringing the total space to about 121,000 square feet.
The OMNIA Nightclub space was even more jaw-dropping when experienced empty. The kinetic chandelier, blasted all over the planet via social media, looked pristine, hanging from the ceiling all by herself.
“We call her Charlotte,” said Lauryn Keim, Tao Group’s assistant director of sales, while showing us around. “She was a $10 million installation, which was beautifully designed. We can change her colors. We can make her do really fun movements to the music. We have a whole team that actually builds a show around her.”
While the OMNIA Dayclub was already open to tremendous fanfare, back at the Flamingo, Luke Combs’ new place, Category 10, was still under construction inside the former Margaritaville. The ghost of Jimmy Buffet would be fine with Combs’ name on the space. Modeled after the multistory, megasprawling venue of the same name in Nashville, Category 10 is slotted to open in October.
Pierogis All Around!
For groups that want a more wholesome experience, 12 people can take pierogi-making lessons from Italian chef Vincenzo Scarmiglia at the Bedford Restaurant by Martha Stewart at Paris Las Vegas. Before the lesson, The Bedford General Manager Patrice Rozat met us in the foyer of the place.
“We sell 40,000 to 45,000 perogies a year in this restaurant,” Rozat said.
Scarmiglia insisted it was actually more: It was around 50,000 to 55,000, he said, in a pure Tuscan accent.
We also experienced chef Guy Savoy’s restaurant at Caesars Palace, an opulent high-end experience for discerning diners. The awards on display here spoke for themselves: Highest-ranked restaurant on La Liste’s Top 1,000 restaurants; Forbes Five-Star for 14 straight years; AAA Five Diamond; two Michelin stars when it was last reviewed.
Frenchman Alain Alpe, the restaurant’s GM, introduced every stage of our seven-course meal. We thought the wine list at the Eiffel Tower was fabulous, but Guy Savoy’s list featured a whopping 24,000 labels. The most expensive one was $270,000. Alpe said he hadn’t tried it.
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Guy Savoy himself was not present, of course, because all his time is spent at his original restaurant back in France. But after all these years, Alpe explained, everyone was glad the place still endured.
“It took two years for Caesars Palace to convince him to come,” said Alpe, who was going on 20 years at the restaurant himself.
“Eighty percent of the staff has been with me since day one,” he added.
Caesars Palace reigns at the forefront of meetings and events in Las Vegas, especially when it comes to CSR projects.
Our lunch at the luxurious Constantine Villa included presentations from Ana Munoz, director of CSR; Deja Williams, marketing manager for the Just One Project; and Eric Vaughn, Caesars Entertainment’s executive director of culinary operations, all of whom provided inspiring project data focused around social inclusion, climate change, food security and mental health.
We also toured The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, the iconic 4,100-pax concert venue Caesars Entertainment built for Celine Dion more than 20 years ago. Dion did more than a thousand shows in the venue during her residency. I discovered that another residency headliner, Rod Stewart, even boarded a Caesars jet at Van Nuys Airport and flew in on the day of his shows, then returned right back home to Beverley Hills on the same night.
A Grand Opening Extravaganza!
When the time came for the official grand opening of the Vanderpump Hotel, Lisa Vanderpump emerged anew in spectacular fashion, replete with her husband and Pomeranian tagging along not too far behind. Hordes of media, staff and weary casino lurkers all scrambled to photograph the moment. Caesars bigwigs and local politicos arrived to give her the “Key to the Las Vegas Strip.”
“This is not just the key to the Strip,” she said. “This is the key to my heart.”
Later, on the carpet leading to the elevators for the upstairs VIP party, she fielded interviews and caught up with several friends, including Sharon Osbourne, who scurried away before anyone got a chance to photograph them together.
The blowout VIP party then unfolded upstairs in the former Drais space—meetings industry profs will associate the nightspot as the final-night reception venue for IMEX America. Rechristened Soleia in May, Vanderpump once again took the stage, looking down on the crowd from the DJ platform at the rooftop beach club to thank everyone who made the hotel possible, cracking her trademark risqué jokes as always.
“When I first imagined standing on a street corner in Vegas, this is not what I had in mind,” she quipped to the delight of the crowd.
