A Different Side of Caesars

The world’s largest casino-entertainment company is going for a small, boutique feel in its newest Vegas venture, the Cromwell

By Kathy Kantorski

News flash: Las Vegas isn’t just for gambling anymore. “The [Las Vegas] market is trending toward the younger affluent customer as well as the international customer,” said Eileen Moore, regional president at Caesars Entertainment Corporation, in a recent interview with Skift, a travel news website. “And what we’re seeing from this younger demographic and international customer is a much more attractive spending pattern into things like retail, spa, food and beverage, and nightlife.”

Enter the Cromwell, Las Vegas’s first stand-alone luxury boutique hotel and casino by Caesars Entertainment. In place of the former Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon (a prime location on the Strip), the Cromwell opened in May 2014 with a mere 188 rooms, including 19 suites. Its small size is a testament to the exclusive luxury-lifestyle atmosphere Caesars hopes to cultivate. And it’s working: according to Moore, the Cromwell has the highest service awards among the 40 hotels in Caesars’s worldwide portfolio.

The Cromwell has 169 standard rooms and 19 suites, each designed in Parisian style. Most look out onto the Las Vegas Strip toward prominent venues such as Caesars Palace and the Bellagio.

Parisian flair is the design theme throughout the Cromwell, seen most prominently in its suites and standard rooms. Ranging from a 723-square-foot one-bedroom to the 2,550-square-foot, six-bedroom Cromwell Suite, the hotel’s 19 suites are strategically positioned to offer impressive views of the Strip, and they all include full-size refrigerators, wet bars stocked to guests’ preferences, steam showers, soaking tubs, and popular game elements such as pool tables and pinball machines. The suites are bedecked with rich hardwoods, marble tiling, custom light fixtures, and light-colored, upholstered wall panels finished with exposed nail heads. Oversize sofas and lounge chairs evoke a welcoming and social atmosphere.

GIADA, the Cromwell’s second-floor restaurant, from Emmy Award-winning chef Giada De Laurentiis, can accommodate almost 300 people in its dining room, its lounge, and its terrace.

The Cromwell’s 169 standard accommodations reflect Parisian loft-style apartments, creating a residential feel in 360 square feet with distressed hardwood flooring, furnishings reminiscent of vintage luggage and trunks, and black-and-white mosaic-tiled showers with playful English-French phrases adorning the walls.

Entertainment areas are plentiful in the Cromwell, too. Bound, its hotel-lobby bar by world-renowned bartender Salvatore Calabrese, offers perfectly executed classic cocktails, never-before-seen espresso cocktails, champagne cocktails, and signature creations. Bound’s distinctive circular bar serves as the centerpiece for the elegant lobby, with gold and dark tones, plush seating, and surrounding curtains that allow guests to separate themselves from the outside hustle and bustle.

GIADA, the self-titled first restaurant by Emmy Award-winning Food Network chef Giada De Laurentiis (also the first solo-female-chef-owned restaurant on the Strip), serves as the cornerstone of the Cromwell with its location on the second floor, overlooking Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road—“the most exciting and dynamic intersection in the world,” according to a GIADA press release. With room for nearly 300 customers, the restaurant comprises three spaces—a dining room, a lounge, and a terrace—and its locale affords it priceless views of the Bellagio fountains, Caesars Palace, and Bally’s Grand Bazaar Shops. Inside, its signature dishes and warm and inviting atmosphere keep the dining experience intimate, and one of its key features is an expansive antipasti bar, behind which stand separate pizza and bread ovens and an area where chefs roll homemade pasta. “When guests come into GIADA, I want them to feel like they are coming to my house for dinner,” De Laurentiis says.

Adding to the Cromwell’s repertoire of famous names, Caesars brought on nightlife impresario Victor Drai to create the eponymous Drai’s, an indoor-outdoor beach club, nightclub, and after-hours hot spot. Spanning more than 65,000 square feet across two levels of the hotel’s 11th story, the rooftop-pool venue will welcome guests both day and night and offer panoramic views of the entire Strip as well as entertainment by DJs from around the globe. “I have been in the Las Vegas nightlife business for 15 years, and I’m not only building the best nightclub in Las Vegas; I’m going to usher in a new era for nightlife and day life,” Drai says. “The mega-clubs have become nothing more than large music venues for million-dollar DJs. We are creating a 360-degree experience. Wherever you turn, you will be awed by the design, the technology, the music, the service, and, most importantly, the experience. We have designed the club to be visual, sensual, sexy, and social.”

Each of the Cromwell’s 169 standard king and double-queen rooms includes distressed hardwood flooring, furnishings reminiscent of vintage luggage and trunks, and other elements of classic French lifestyle.

Drai’s club will bring the beach club-nightclub combination concept popular in destinations such as Saint-Tropez, France, and Ibiza, Spain, to Las Vegas, and it will have one of the best vantage points in the city. The club’s lower level will have two large, elevated main pools with central wet decks and perimeter seating, and 10 VIP bungalows and luxury cabanas will each contain their own pools, offering privacy in the middle of the action. The mezzanine level will have 15 more VIP cabanas, a third private pool, and five private VIP bungalows that will overlook Las Vegas Boulevard and contain their own showers, restrooms, and more than 40 daybeds.

Heard enough of the term “VIP” yet? That’s the point. The Cromwell is designed to treat every guest like a VIP, from their arrival in the lobby bar through their accommodations, dining, and poolside enjoyment.

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