Cromwell to Get Overhaul and Rebrand to Vanderpump Hotel

By Scott Roeben, on March 12 2025
5 min read 5 comments
Las Vegas Las Vegas Hotels

We’re as shocked as anyone that Caesars Entertainment seems to be the only casino company in Las Vegas doing anything interesting at the moment. Example?

The Cromwell will become The Vanderpump Hotel in early 2026.

Cromwell was formerly Bill’s Gambling Hall and Barbary Coast, and was nearly Gansevoort at one point. And nobody recalls Caesars was thinking about calling it Caesars Republic, but we have been doing this crap a long, long time. Naming things is hard. Just ask the folks involved with changing Imperial Palace to The Quad (now The Linq). Yes, we worked at Caesars Entertainment when Quad was chosen, don’t make it awkward.

Rumor is anyone making a PMS joke will be trespassed.

Anyway, Lisa Vanderpump has several branding deals with Caesars Entertainment, including Vanderpump Cocktail Garden at Caesars Palace, Vanderpump a Paris at Paris Las Vegas and the recently-opened Pinky’s by Vanderpump at Flamingo.

These establishments are printing money, so it makes sense for Caesars Entertainment to try and further exploit that success.

Here’s a blurb from the Vanderpump Hotel news release before we get to the stuff that wasn’t in the news release that you won’t find in the Las Vegas Review-Journal because they pretty much just copy and paste from news releases, which is what we’re about to do, but this is different because we’re sharing it ironically: “Vanderpump will bring her stunning aesthetic and distinctive design to enhance the hotel reception and front desk area, introduce an all-new lounge and redesign the 188 guest rooms and suites. The design will feature signature Vanderpump Alain furnishings and lighting fixtures and, as always with Vanderpump projects, everything will be bespoke and created specifically for the location. As a hotel, there will be an emphasis on sexy elegance and comfort, with gorgeous rooms and a fresh, new feel to the casino floor. Vanderpump will also hand-select the amenities for hotel guests.”

Basically, this is a licensing deal. In the case of celebrity lounges and restaurants, the celebrity gets 5% of the venue’s gross revenue. This is definitely not that.

Vanderpump and her team, including designer Nick Alain, will assist with the hotel’s refresh and she’ll be obligated to show up for photo op once a year. Otherwise, Vanderpump Hotel will be operated by Caesars Entertainment, including its excellent Food & Beverage team.

While the Cromwell is popular, it doesn’t really move the needle for Caesars Entertainment, and not just because it’s a boutique hotel with limited room capacity.

It just doesn’t really have its own personality.

Now, it will have personality galore. Vanderpump’s brand is tacky-opulent, charming gaudiness. It is anti-understatement. It’s post-menopausal labial folds brought to life in the form of interior design.

Vanderpump lives where the Venn diagram circles of elegance and kitsch overlap. It’s “Beverly Hills Baroque,” faux opulence with a borderline obsession for pink, flowers and ornate chandeliers.

You’ll never believe what the name of our band in high school was.

Still embarrassed by Kevin’s hat.

Basically, Vanderpump Hotel Las Vegas is going to be Cougar Central.

So, how does all this affect the things you love about Cromwell?

Well, first, say goodbye to the Cromwell name forever. It’s not coming back, even when the Vanderpump collaboration ends.

Will Giada stick around? Our sources give a very tentative “for now.” Which means Giada’s restaurant isn’t delivering the revenue other celebrity restaurants are (it’s worlds away from even the worst-performing Gordon Ramsay venues, and there really aren’t any worst-performing Gordon Ramsay venues in Las Vegas), and it doesn’t help that Giada De Laurentiis is cheating on Caesars Entertainment with Penn Gaming. This is the kind of shenanigans that killed a bigtime restaurant collaboration at Wynn.

While it would make more sense for the Giada space to be a Vanderpump space, it’s not clear when that might happen.

We’ve also gotten questions about whether Drai’s Beachclub and Nightclub, and Drai’s After Hours, will stay. Unfortunately, they will.

These venues are a nightmare for Caesars Entertainment, and are an even worse fit for a Vanderpump-branded hotel, but Drai’s has a longterm contract locked in by reputed non-tipper Victor Drai.

The Drai’s venues draw a rough crowd, and in one incident, four asshats (including New Orleans Saints player Alvin Kamara and Bengals player Chris Lammon) nearly beat someone to death.

Anyway, Vanderpump Hotel is stuck with Drai’s for the foreseeable future.

Cromwell
The leap from Cromwell to Vanderpump won’t be a big one.

The fate of the popular Bond lounge is unknown, but longtime fans hope an “all-new lounge” means Bond might endure, even if it gets a new name.

We’ve never seen any of the TV shows Lisa Vanderpump is featured in, and we aren’t really her customer demographic, but rebranding Cromwell is a bold and probably smart move on the part of Caesars Entertainment.

Vanderpump Hotel is just one of the smart moves Caesars has made recently. They literally made a Bally’s tower part of Paris, complete with balconies facing the Bellagio fountains to compete with Cosmo’s. Caesars is about to reopen Flamingo’s Go Pool after a massive overhaul, and added multiple offerings to the resort (Gordon Ramsay Burger, Havana 1957 and Pinky’s) in recent months.

Caesars has invested many millions into new venues at its flagship resort Caesars Palace including Caspian’s Cocktails & Caviar, lavish new high limit slot and table games salons and several new celebrity-branded concepts in the resort’s expensive but satisfying food court.

A high-ranking executive we spoke to at Caesars Entertainment freely admitted the company has no real idea how the Vanderpump Hotel will do. Vanderpump has her fans, but a lot of people like us have zero clue what she’s even famous for and we don’t really make decisions about where we spend our money based upon whose name is on the building. Unless the names are Sapphire or Palomino or Treasure or Chica or Honey, but that’s not the point.

But we’re thankful somebody’s up for trying something, anything new on The Strip worth talking about.

Yes, Lisa Vanderpump’s places are sort of the theme park version of luxury rather than actual sophistication, but that sort of describes Las Vegas as a whole.

Lisa Vanderpump is giving the Las Vegas Strip an injection of goddess energy.

We have high hopes for this renovation and rebrand, and the distinctly feminine vibe will be refreshing in a world of casino-hotels that tend to cater to a male sensibility. That’s because casinos were once the domain of men who gambled and spit and scratched themselves while talking about sports and boobs. That still goes on, but it gets old and everyone should try and be better during these chaotic times.

Shout-out to our friend Kerry who shared rumblings of the Vanderpump collaboration back in March.

The Strip could use a woman’s touch and Vanderpump Hotel is bound to be that. In the words of a famed poet, Beyonce, “Who run the world? Girls.”

Chippendales might want to see if Vanderpump Hotel is going to have a theater space, as it’s struggling at Linq. Just saying.