Bellagio vs Wynn Las Vegas: A Mile Apart, Built by the Same Man, Further Apart Every Year
Steve Wynn built both. MGM runs one from a building it rents; Wynn Resorts owns the other outright. In 2026 one holds five Forbes five-star awards in Las Vegas and the other, after August, holds none.
Published 2026-11-02.
Bellagio opened on October 15, 1998 and Wynn Las Vegas on April 28, 2005, 1.2 miles up the boulevard in a straight line, and the same man built both. Twenty-one years later the two hotels are run by different companies, priced in different brackets and drifting apart in ways that are easy to measure. Wynn Resorts reported a Las Vegas average daily rate of $575 for the second quarter of 2026. MGM does not break Bellagio out, and its Strip-wide figure of $249 for 2025 includes Excalibur and Luxor, so it describes the company rather than the hotel; the gap is nevertheless where the two companies have chosen to sit.This is a comparison of what can be checked. Taste is yours.
Stay at Wynn if the room and the spa are the point: 4,748 rooms and suites across two towers, two Forbes five-star spas, free self-parking for hotel guests, the larger casino floor. Stay at Bellagio if you want the middle of the Strip, the free show every half hour, the bigger poker room and an MGM Rewards card that also works at Borgata and National Harbor. Both charge a resort fee in the fifties; no Wynn tier waives it, and MGM Gold does at Bellagio.
The buildings, by the companies' own numbers
Bellagio has 3,933 rooms including 510 suites, by MGM's February 2026 fact sheet; the Spa Tower opened on December 23, 2004 at a cost of $375 million. The casino is about 154,000 square feet with 1,281 slot machines and 154 tables, per MGM's 2025 annual report. Wynn and Encore together have 4,748 rooms, suites and villas, about 199,000 square feet of casino, 231 tables and 1,558 slots, per Wynn Resorts' 2025 annual report. Encore, opened December 22, 2008, is all suites, 2,034 of them.
Who owns the building differs too. Wynn Resorts owns its 75-acre parcel and the 128 acres of golf course behind it. Bellagio's real estate was sold in 2019 to a venture led by Blackstone for $4.25 billion and leased back to MGM for an initial 30 years at $245 million a year; Realty Income bought a 21.9% stake in that venture in 2023. MGM operates the hotel and guarantees the venture's $3.01 billion of debt. None of this changes your check-in, but it is why "MGM's Bellagio" and "Wynn's Wynn" are not parallel phrases.
The renovation cycles are at different ages. Bellagio redesigned all 819 rooms and 104 suites of the Spa Tower in 2023 for $110 million and scheduled the 400-odd main-tower suites to follow from 2024; we found no 2025 or 2026 room announcement. Wynn's own tower had a refresh completed in 2022, by local reporting, and several Las Vegas outlets describe an Encore suite renovation under way through 2026 and into 2027; Wynn has published no schedule, so treat that as reporting rather than fact. Our history of both buildings covers how one man's taste produced two hotels.
Fees and parking, and the status that cancels them
Our resort-fee tracker, last checked April 29, 2026, had Bellagio at $51.02 a night with self-parking at $23 and valet at $35, and Wynn at $50 with free self-parking and $30 valet. Wynn's own documents have moved since. A hotel-partner addendum dated October 15, 2025 puts the Wynn resort fee at $55 plus tax, and Wynn's parking page now says self-parking is free for registered guests but $25 a day for everyone else after three hours, with valet at $40 and no grace period. Bellagio's fee is reported by trackers at around $55 as well; MGM's own pages would not load for us, so take that as unofficial.
What matters more is which card switches the fees off. At Bellagio, MGM Rewards Pearl brings free self-parking and Gold adds valet and a waived resort fee on rooms booked direct, by MGM's published benefits as summarized in the guides we read. At Wynn, Platinum brings self-parking and Black brings valet, and no tier waives the resort fee; the terms say it applies even on a complimentary stay. If you hold MGM Gold, a Bellagio night is $55 cheaper than its rate; if you hold Wynn Black, a Wynn night is not. Our Wynn Rewards explainer has the rest of that program.
Restaurants and spas after the Michelin return
Michelin came back to Las Vegas on August 26, 2026, in its first Southwest guide, after an absence of seventeen years; its last Las Vegas guide was 2009. The results were hard on both hotels. Two stars went to Joël Robuchon at MGM Grand and one each to é by José Andrés, Guy Savoy and L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Nothing at Bellagio or Wynn was starred. Michael Mina at Bellagio was listed as Recommended; Wing Lei at Wynn did not get one.
Forbes Travel Guide's 2026 awards tell the opposite story. Wynn Resorts took 18 five-star awards company-wide, five of them in Las Vegas: Wynn Tower Suites, for the twentieth consecutive year, Encore Tower Suites, The Spa at Wynn, The Spa at Encore and Wing Lei. MGM's 13 five-stars for 2026 include one at Bellagio, Le Cirque, for the tenth year, and Le Cirque served its last dinner on August 23, 2026; MGM says a new concept will open in the space in mid-2027. Neither Bellagio's hotel nor Spa Bellagio is on MGM's 2026 five-star list. Picasso closed in 2024 when Julian Serrano retired after 25 years. The February 2026 fact sheet still lists Carbone Riviera as "coming fall 2025," and we could not confirm it has opened.
Wynn's dining has turned over too, in a different direction. Jardin at Encore closed for good in April 2026 after a decade; Pisces replaced Lakeside at the Lake of Dreams; Sartiano's and the private Zero Bond club opened this year. The spas are the clearest gap in the whole comparison: Wynn has two with the top Forbes rating, and Bellagio's 55,000-square-foot spa with 51 treatment rooms does not hold it this year.
The free show, the paid show and the poker room
Bellagio's two attractions cost nothing. The Fountains run every half hour in the afternoon and every 15 minutes from 7pm to midnight, on a lake of more than 8.5 acres; the Conservatory changes five times a year and is open 24 hours. Both are listed as complimentary on MGM's fact sheet. "O" continues in its 1,808-seat theater; Cirque du Soleil confirmed in August 2026 that it will keep four resident Las Vegas productions and that is one of them. The Gallery of Fine Art is open and ticketed.
Wynn's free show is the Lake of Dreams, nightly every half hour from dusk until 11:30pm, reworked by Michael Curry with new music, and best watched from the SW Steakhouse patio or Bar Parasol with a drink you paid for. Its paid show is between acts: Awakening, which opened in November 2022 at a reported cost of about $150 million, gave its final performance on October 10, 2026, and Wynn says a new production will debut in 2027. XS nightclub closed in August for renovation and reopens November 5.
Poker is Bellagio's, by table count. Its room has 40 tables by PokerNews' count and a high-stakes room renamed Legends Room from Bobby's Room in 2020. Wynn's poker room is at Encore, 28 tables, open around the clock, and it hosts the WPT World Championship from November 27 to December 21 this year. For a tournament player the Wynn calendar is the draw; for a cash player on a Tuesday, Bellagio has more seats. Wynn also has the only golf course on the Strip, reopened in 2019 and open now.
Where the usual advice is wrong
The usual advice is "Bellagio for the casino, Wynn for the hotel," and the first half is backwards. Wynn and Encore have about 45,000 more square feet of casino, 77 more tables and nearly 300 more slot machines than Bellagio. Bellagio's genuine casino edge is the poker room and the location, the northeast corner of Flamingo Road, across from Caesars Palace and the new Vanderpump Hotel, where more of the Strip is in walking distance.
The second half has become truer with time. In 2026 Wynn holds Forbes five-star hotel, spa and restaurant awards in Las Vegas and Bellagio, after August, holds none of the three. Wynn's rates say what Wynn thinks of its rooms. If the room is what you are buying, the honest recommendation is Wynn, and our Strip ranking reached the same place.
Where the advice goes wrong for a gambler is the card. A Bellagio stay earns MGM Rewards, which is the card for Borgata, National Harbor, Detroit and the rest of the Strip's MGM block; a Wynn stay earns a card that works at Wynn, Encore, Boston and Macau. If you already hold MGM Gold, Bellagio costs you $55 a night less than the rack rate and Wynn costs you the rack rate plus the fee, and that difference over four nights is a dinner at either one. Our loyalty comparison makes the general case: pick the hotel whose card you already carry, unless the room itself is the reason for the trip.
For a first visit, Bellagio. For the trip where you have seen the fountains and want to sleep well, Wynn.
Topics
- las-vegas
- bellagio
- wynn
- strip
- comparison
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