Las Vegas Hilton


The Las Vegas Hilton stands a full half-mile east of the Strip, set back behind the Riviera on Paradise Road. Traditionally, its location alongside the Convention Center enabled it to compete on equal terms with the major Strip casinos, but since the advent of Bellagio and the Venetian, the Hilton has been faltering. Current owners Park Place have long been trying to sell it, meanwhile shunting its former high-rolling regulars to their other properties, and failing to upgrade its facilities to any significant extent. As a result, barring its incongruous appeal to sci-fi fans, the Hilton is becoming the casino that Las Vegas forgot.

In the late 1960s, Kirk Kerkorian hoped that building the largest hotel in the world on this site would spur the development of Paradise Road as a second, parallel Strip. Existing Strip owners felt threatened enough to attempt to prevent his International Hotel project ever breaking ground. When it finally went ahead, Howard Hughes tried to spoil things by buying up the Landmark Hotel nearby – a miniature Stratosphere – and reopening it as a casino on the self-same weekend, in July 1969.

In any event, the International was an instant success, perhaps best remembered as the venue for Elvis Presley's triumphant return to live performance. Elvis wisely allowed Barbra Streisand to inaugurate its untested showroom, profiting from her less than happy experience when he replaced her a month later. Kerkorian himself swiftly tired of his creation, and after just a year he sold his stake to Hilton, who made it a condition of the sale that they took over Elvis's contract as well as the hotel itself. In his eight-year run at the Hilton, Elvis went on to sell out 837 consecutive shows, appearing in front of 2.5 million people. The Hilton people remain grateful; a statue of Elvis in the main lobby commemorates the King's achievement, and a memorial service was held here for his manager Colonel Tom Parker in 1998.

The Las Vegas Hilton's symmetrical trefoil shape made it easy to double its initial 1500 rooms to more than three thousand in 1973, simply by extending each of its three wings (if you look closely you can see the joins). However, it had to wait 25 years before Paradise Road acquired its second casino, the Hard Rock, about two miles south. Pedestrians being the rarest of species on Paradise Road, it's a place you're only expected to reach by car, and it doesn't even bother to present an enticing facade to the sidewalk.

It seemed out of character for the somewhat staid Hilton to open the Star Trek Experience in its north tower in 1998, which has established itself as one of Las Vegas's most popular themed attractions (daily 11am–11pm; $25). The Experience is roughly equivalent to a top-echelon ride in the theme parks of LA and Orlando; it's not bad, but it's absurdly overpriced for a one-off. Visits start from the Space Quest Casino, a sort of Enterprise with slots, to which access is free. If you're lucky enough to arrive when the lines are short – expect to wait up to two hours on summer weekends – you might not even realize that the ramp that spirals up from the ticket booths is a glorified queuing area. Glossy display panels on both sides recount a very wordy episode-by-episode Star Trek chronology that features highlights such as World War III in 2053, the colonization of Mars in 2103, and the birth of Spock in 2230. Museum-like artifacts and costumes abound, and diminutive Ferengi stroll among you.



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