Vegas for $20 a Night

(MoneyWatch)  If no one believed my previous posts about Las Vegas being clobbered by the recession, they can now see it at one of Sin City's hotels offering rooms for less than $20 a night. I can't vouch for the look or ambiance of each place, but at least it's cheap.

According to the Dallas Morning News, here's the list of dirt-cheap hotels:

• Binion's
• Boulder Station
• El Cortez
• Fiesta Rancho
• Four Queens
• Gold Spike
• Golden Gate
• Hooters
• Palace Station
• Plaza
• Sahara
• Sam's Town
• Wild Wild West

About 60 hotels are offering rooms for less than $50 a night, up from 42 just last year. Is this a return back to the Vegas of yesteryear with $20 hotel rooms and $5.95 steak dinners? Honestly, this decade of classing up Vegas has made it lose some of of its trashy allure that no amount of Elvis impersonators and topless dancers can salvage.

While some of the hotels offered rooms at higher rates than $20, the under $20 rooms tended to be Sunday-Thursday. The Sahara offers a $25 Sunday-Thursday room rate with a $10 food credit, $25 gaming credit and 20 percent off any spa treatment. It almost makes me want to spend a few days in 110-degree heat just for the deal itself -- which is, I think, the whole idea.

Photo courtesy of the Las Vegas Tourism Bureau