The first thing you notice stepping into the two-story sky villa at the Palms in Las Vegas is the sound: the squeak of shoes on marble, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, cool underfoot with no sign of underfloor heating. Then the scale registers. A butler wine bar stocked with bottles that run well past the complimentary coffee sitting beside them. A gold-felt pool table. A foosball table so well-built it borders on absurd. And through the glass, sweeping views from downtown all the way across to Mandalay Bay. For anyone who has stayed in a hotel room where you are afraid to touch anything because of the sensors, the Palms sky villa is a studied correction: no sensors, no roped-off corners, just obscene amounts of marble and space that most Vegas bars would envy.
The suites that rewrote the idea of a hotel room
The two-story sky villa runs from $35,000 a night, and the alcohol is not included. The layout stretches across two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a private plunge pool outside, a single-treadmill gym with its own TV, and a shower where, as Walk With Me Tim put it, ‘you can definitely get around about eight people in this shower.’ A round bed on the upper level looks out over the strip through floor-to-ceiling glass. The Japanese toilets are heated. The bins are gold. A small side room, quieter and plainer than the rest, is sized for a nanny or an extra guest.
One floor down, metaphorically speaking, is the Kingpin Suite, themed after the 1996 film with Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray. The suite is built for groups: double-stacked adult bunk beds sleep eight in a shared friends’ room, a full bowling lane runs the length of the suite, and five TVs face the lane so no one misses a frame. A dedicated shoe room holds the bowling shoes. The roses pressed inside the decorative bowling balls are a nod to the film. Prices start at $15,000 a night, which for four couples splitting the cost lands the bill in a more manageable place, though the four couples do share one bathroom.
Two other suites round out the Palms lineup. The hardwood suite spans 10,000 square feet and contains a private, regulation-size half basketball court with a professional locker room and NBA-sized fold-out beds, plus a full bar, a pool table, and a hidden whiskey room. The Empathy Suite sits at the other end of the scale entirely: when it first opened it was named the most expensive hotel suite in the world, with rates starting at $100,000 a night and a two-night minimum. It currently averages around $35,000 a night.
The buffet that earns the queue
Dinner that Tuesday night was the Palms buffet, timed carefully: arriving early to beat the crowd that fills it later in the evening. Crab legs anchor the spread and are the only station with a formal queuing system, a reliable signal of their popularity. The rest of the buffet moves through smoked barbecue ribs, brisket, fried chicken, mac and cheese, Mexican-style street corn, and a dessert section holding chocolate cones and mini creme brulees. Sweet potato pie topped with marshmallow, a combination that reads as unlikely to anyone raised in the UK, turned out to be genuinely good, sitting somewhere between a side dish and a dessert. A lobster night runs on certain evenings at $79 all-you-can-eat, with a ninety-minute time limit per table.
The Palms holds a specific distinction in Las Vegas history: it was the first resort in the city to be fully owned by a Native American tribe. Its position slightly off the main strip gives it an unusual vantage point, with uninterrupted views running from downtown all the way south toward Mandalay Bay.
The plunge pool with a view nobody warned about
The one-story sky villa, where Tim actually stayed, came with its own gift basket, a Peloton, a sauna, a two-bedroom layout with two bathrooms, and a rooftop plunge pool that turned out to be more of a deep hot tub than an open swim. The temperature was perfect. The view across the Vegas skyline was, from that vantage point, genuinely hard to beat.
Downstairs in the lobby, a shark suspended in a tank by Damien Hirst floats in its glass case, unreachable, unexplained, an odd punctuation mark in a building that contains a bowling alley, a basketball court, and enough marble to resurface a small city.
