We've set up a deal with Enterprise Rent-A-Car of Las Vegas for both of the Trouble in Vegas tournaments. By booking through us, Enterprise will give you the rates published below, or 10% off the retail cost. In either case, you get a great deal.

Click to book here.

Using the link above will plug in our account number and give you the tournament deal. If you prefer to book by phone, you can call toll free at 1-800-595-0505 and give the id code, 54C8121.

We are the final stages of booking a great group rates at a hotel in Old Downtown. Old Downtown is at the very northern end of the Strip, and less than 10 miles from the field site. We'll release the details on this location by the 3rd week in November.

Skip's Travel Notes and Suggestions

The below are our suggestions on shopping for tickets to get to Trouble in Vegas (Feb 9-11). If you're an old pro at getting your team from point A to point B via the friendly skies, feel free to ignore this section. However, I know there are more than a few teams out there for whom this will be a brand new travel adventure. If you're in this boat, please read on. If you think most of this is common sense...well, it is, but sometimes it's nice to have reaffirmation in our beliefs. It should be noted that none of us are from the Vegas area, nor have worked for the travel industry - so, you know, Caveat Emptor.

First things first, dates:
You should plan on being in Las Vegas by at least midnight on Thursday, Feb 8th and plan on leaving no earlier than 6 PM Sunday, Feb 12th. We are guaranteeing at least 9 games per team, and those will be scheduled all the way until at 5 PM on Sunday.

Suggestions:
1. Schedule your flights to get in at early-afternoon on Thursday. You're going to lose most of that day to travel anyway, and you know your team isn't really going to be sleeping much through the weekend. Do yourself a solid and use this first half-day to rest up.

2. Fly out late Sunday night or Monday (Feb 12) morning if you can. Red eye flights are cheap, and as a general rule, you will find better ticket prices between Mon-Thurs because it is the slower part of week for airlines.

Location, Location, Location:
Fly into McCarran International Airport - (LAS). Don't try to be the speadthrift hero and fly into San Diego or LA and then drive to Las Vegas. It's 4 hours (minimum) from either of these locations to Vegas - and you'll lose whatever gain you might have made in gas and sanity.
The Las Vegas airport is about 10 miles from the fields. It is also about 10 miles from the tournament hotel. Travel time between any 2 of these locations is about 15-20 minutes barring traffic. Plan accordingly.

Suggestions:
1. USE THE HIGHWAYS IN VEGAS. Vegas is filled with tourists who drive at 10 miles an hour down major thoroughfares, in fact the whole purpose of Vegas is to drive at 10 mph to gawk at things. Though it may look on the map like the Strip is the easiest way to get from one place to the next, you'll want to use the highway instead. Trust us on this.

Booking Tickets:
Southwest Airlines (www.southwestairlines.com) consistently has the best prices for Las Vegas, but fills up fast. National carriers Delta (www.delta.com) Continental (www.continental.com), American (http://www.americanairlines.com/) and others all have daily direct flights from most major cities in America.

Suggestions:
1. Check online prices so you know what kind of fares are being offered to the public.
2. Call the group reservations desk for a few carriers and compare prices. I have included popular airlines below. Most group desks are only open during business hours:

Southwest Airlines: 1-800-433-5368
America West: 1-800-634-2312
Continental: 1-800-525-1700
Delta: 1-800-221-1212

3. Contact your local field office for STA travel (the Student Travel Association) -- www.sta.com. I generally think that most travel agents are not worth their commission, but STA is different. They actually care... Or something like that. All I know is that they got me to Paganello in Italy for under $400 when everyone else was charging upwards of $850.00, so I feel obliged to endorse them.

Individual Tickets:
If you are looking for individual tickets, might I recommend:

www.orbitz.com
www.expedia.com
www.cheaptickets.com
www.travelocity.com
www.lowestfare.com

and for the truly desperate:

www.hotwire.com
www.priceline.com

Keep in mind that these tickets are rarely sold in blocks of more than 8, and that by purchasing them you drive up the price of all remaining tickets - i.e. you can't use these for your entire team (unless you're really crafty). Hopefully your travel plans will not include these last sites.

Last thing. Book now (maybe):
The travel industry in a fickle beast. Or more to the point, it's a game. Airlines want to get the most money for their tickets, but don't want to price-out their audience and end up flying half-empty planes. So they do a lot of social engineering stuff to try and work potential consumers. On the user end this means that tickets that are cheap tonight might jump 30% by morning, or may drop another 10%, or be gone entirely. Though in some rare instances you might find better prices by playing the waiting game on orbitz or expedia, the general trend is that tickets will get more expensive the longer you wait.

Suggestions:
1. Price tickets now. If they are even close to $180-$250 per person, buy them. If they are $300 and up, try back tomorrow. If you consistently find that prices are out of your range, play with departure times and see if you can do better. Check departures from other airports close by.

2. You should have your tickets in hand no later than 2 weeks out (that's January 25th). There will be no bid refunds given because we must pay a lot of our hard costs (fields, party, trainers, water....) up front.

As always, if you've having a hard time with any of this stuff, or need some hand holding, drop me a line. Not that I'm a pro at all, but I've been through this process before and might have some other context specific suggestions.

Good luck,

skip