Caesars Palace Villas Named Best Casino Hotel by AAA and It’s a Pretty Big Deal
The Villas at Caesars Palace have been named the number one casino hotel in AAA’s inaugural ranking of casino hotels and resorts, beating out 160 competitors across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica and the Caribbean.
The Villas retained their AAA Five Diamond designation for the second consecutive year, an impressive honor even if you are one of those people who hears “AAA” and thinks, “I don’t have a drinking problem! I stop when I lose consciousness!” That’s AA. Who made you like this?
AAA Five Diamond is the organization’s highest honor, given to fewer than 1% of the 23,000 hotels in its Diamond program. Only about 0.4% of AAA Diamond hotels achieve Five Diamond status. We are not a math person, but that’s genuinely impressive.
Another fun fact that could win you a bar bet someday: Only three Las Vegas hotels hold AAA Five Diamond status in 2026. They are The Villas at Caesars, Four Seasons at Mandalay Bay and Waldorf Astoria, which doesn’t have a casino, so who cares?
AAA’s Diamond ratings are based on in-person evaluations, including unannounced inspections and anonymous overnight stays. Hotels are evaluated on cleanliness, amenities, service and consistency.
Find a dead body under the bed frame, you’re bumped to Two Diamonds.
The Villas at Caesars are made up of six exclusive suites: Claudius Villa, Marcus Aurelius Villa, Constantine Villa, Hadrian Villa, Titus Villa and Trajan Villa.
Yes, it’s all dudes. That’s because 99.9% of the people who gamble enough to get into these rooms are dudes. That’s not the official reason they’re all named after dudes, of course. The real reason is the patriarchy. Sorry to make it awkward.
The Villas are named after men because there were no female Roman emperors, of course.
Interestingly, none of the suites are named after Julius Caesar, the guy who inspired the resort’s name. That’s because he wasn’t a Roman emperor. He was a dictator of the Roman Republic. Augustus, his adopted heir, became Rome’s first emperor in 27 BC.
Anyhoo, Villa guests get a slew of perks, including private airport transportation, butler service, concierge assistance and gourmet in-villa dining. Villas also have private elevators, plunge pools, media rooms and direct access to the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis.
Caesars also has other wins to trumpet: Caesars Palace, Nobu Hotel Caesars Palace and Vanderpump Hotel all received AAA Four Diamond designations.
Caesars Palace and Nobu Hotel held onto their Four Diamond ratings for the second consecutive year. Vanderpump got its designation after just three months of operation.
Yes, it’s all a little confusing. The Villas (AAA Five Diamond) are judged as a separate entity from Caesars Palace itself (AAA Four Diamond).
To put all this into perspective, a AAA Five Diamond designation is elite status. The Four Diamond club is a little less exclusive, with about two dozen Las Vegas resorts on the list, including Bellagio, Wynn, Venetian, Fontainebleau, Aria, Cosmopolitan, Circa, Red Rock, Durango and M Resort. Only about 7% of AAA-rated hotels are Four Diamond.
AAA also evaluates restaurants. Las Vegas has two Five Diamond restaurants: Joel Robuchon at MGM Grand and Restaurant Guy Savoy at Caesars Palace. Another 21 Las Vegas-area restaurants have Four Diamond status.
The last time we were in The Villas, we were attending a staff meeting (we worked in digital marketing at Caesars Entertainment for six years, along with doing their AAA Five Diamond blog, the Pulse of Vegas) led by then-CEO Gary Loveman. We took a lot of photos. We aren’t sure The Villas look like this today, but we’re sharing anyway.
Loveman, a card-carrying member of the patriarchy, pretty much revolutionized casino marketing. He helped transform casinos from businesses that relied on intuition and relationships into the sophisticated, data-driven marketing operations they are today. You know, he hired a metric shit-ton of MBAs.
One of the things we recall Loveman saying was about how it’s not hard to market higher-end product, like The Villas, but it gets challenging with lower-end brands. He told his team, “It’s no fun marketing an iPhone. Some of our places are BlackBerrys.”
For our fellow youths, a BlackBerry was an early smartphone. We should probably have put quotation marks around “smart.”
We took a lot of photos during our visit, including a bunch of the decorative flourishes. Everything was sort of shiny and bespoke, whatever that might mean.
There were in-room golf simulators and entire pianos and rooms with exercise equipment and elaborate bathrooms bigger than our actual house, along with little bars and pool tables and TVs that magically emerge from furniture.
Every space held discoveries both big and small. It was sort of like an alternate reality, and these suites left an impression that endures in our memory today.
The thing about The Villas that Caesars didn’t include in its news release is this: Can anyone stay there, and how much?
Unlike some ultra-high-end suites, these aren’t strictly invitation-only, which means regular people can book them. The caveat: You have to be ready to spend $25,000 to $35,000 per night.
If your play is good enough, you could be comped. Caesars doesn’t publicly disclose how much gambling action is required to score a free villa, but we can sort of reverse-engineer it.
What kind of gambling action would it take to get a $35,000-per-night villa comped? Assuming a slot machine holds 10% of wagers, a player would have to cycle $350,000 through the machine to generate $35,000 in theoretical losses. But casinos don’t typically return 100% of theoretical losses in comps. Assuming a 30% reinvestment rate, generating enough theoretical loss to justify a $35,000 comp would require about $1.2 million in slot coin-in. Related: The casino’s actual cost of providing the room is much less than its retail price, so adjust the numbers accordingly.
Do you make decisions about where to stay based upon awards and diamonds and stars? There are AAA Diamonds, Forbes Stars, Michelin Stars, Michelin Keys and even AA Rosettes.
And, no, AA is not what you’re thinking. It’s the Automobile Association (AA), the UK’s counterpart to America’s AAA.
Who made you like this?
Leave your thoughts on “Caesars Palace Villas Named Best Casino Hotel by AAA and It’s a Pretty Big Deal”