Elara: A Hilton Grand Vacations Hotel Las Vegas Impressions

I recently stayed at the Elara in Las Vegas, which is a Hilton Grand Vacations property. At the time of booking, I wanted to earn as many Hilton points as possible, but of course, now I don’t care since HHonors got devalued. Still, I kept my reservation because it was the most economical 1 bedroom suite I could find and there were four of us staying there. Here are my impressions of the property.

Location

The Elara is connected to Planet Hollywood by the Miracle Mile Shops – so even though it technically is off the Strip it basically feels like a part of it. I think of Planet Hollywood as the “middle” of the strip, you have the Wynn and Encore up at the north end while Mandalay is on the south side.

Planet Hollywood isn’t my favorite casino by any stretch, but I did appreciate the central location of the hotel. Generally when I am in Las Vegas I walk everywhere and Elara was never further than a 15-20 minute walk to where I wanted to go.

Room

This will be the longest part of my impressions, since I generally use a hotel in Las Vegas as a bed. We booked a 1-bedroom suite for an average rate of about $250 per night after taxes and fees. Split four ways on Memorial Day Weekend in Las Vegas, I thought this was a fair deal.

The room was well equipped with a kitchenette, dining room table, and large bathroom. There was a separate master bedroom and a sectional couch which also could pull out as another bed. To me, the best part of the Elara is that every room comes equipped with its own projector screen! It’s great for watching sports, or really doing anything. My one issue with the projector screen was that it’s tough to figure out where to point the remote! And even when we figured it out, it wasn’t very responsive.

All in all, the room was very comfortable, I appreciated having a fridge to store comestibles, and the view was pretty impressive. Oh, the picture of the shower reminds me, the water felt a little soft – I thought that was weird.

Amenities

Like I said, I generally use hotels to sleep in, but the pool looked really nice and housekeeping was very responsive (I had to make a few requests). That’s about all I have to say about that.

HHonors stuff

The front desk guy said he had upgraded my room as an HHonors Gold member, but he only gave me a higher floor with a nicer view (not that I’m complaining!). I’ve heard it’s tough to get upgraded at Hilton Grand Vacations properties, but I don’t know.

I had also seen on a Flyertalk thread that Hilton sometimes doesn’t credit points from Elara stays. Sure enough, when my points posted, I was credited with 0 points. I called the HHonors desk, they said it’s a fairly common occurrence with Elara. I called yesterday and they said it should take 10 business days for the points to post. I’ll update if/when they post, I’m not too worried since Elara sent me my folio via e-mail. Still, this is a little annoying. Edit: Points posted two days after I called.

Elara’s HHonors reward category is “distinctive rewards”. Okay… For what it’s worth, redemptions were about 185,000 points for Memorial Day Weekend and are 35,000 points for next Wednesday.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I really enjoyed staying at the Elara. I think the room would be great for a family, but why would I take family to Las Vegas? I thought the pricing was fair – I also saw that it dropped to about $150 on weekdays in the summer (Vegas’ slow time). I’d definitely consider it again in the future, although Hyatt has just partnered with MGM Hotels (Bellagio, MGM Grand, etc.), so if I ever get back to Vegas maybe I’ll stay with them!