Rumor: Delano to Get a W Hotels Rebrand

By Scott Roeben, on August 13 2024
2 min read 3 comments
Las Vegas Las Vegas Hotels

A source says Delano at Mandalay Bay is getting a rebrand by W Hotels.

W Hotels, owned by Marriott International, appears to be set for taking over the Delano tower as it did a tower at SLS. That didn’t go well, but Delano is in a much better location and the owner doesn’t do coke or whatever. Long story.

If W Hotels follows its previous pattern, Delano would be called W Las Vegas, with its own distinct amenities, vibe and marketing database.

Not our best Photoshop, but get your own blog if you want to show off your def skilz.

We were the first to share Delano would be rebranded, but at the time, we weren’t informed to what. Or possibly who.

We haven’t been given a specific timeline for the rebrand, but we’d feel just terrible if we ruined all the surprises.

There has been some speculation Delano would be rebranded to Mirage (it closed July 17, 2024, in case you missed the memo), but that didn’t make a lot of sense because the Seminole tribe will retain the right to use the Mirage brand until Hard Rock Las Vegas opens in 2027.

It’ll be the one with the bigass guitar tower and will be hard to miss.

Why would MGM Resorts, operator of Mandalay Bay and Delano do a hotel-within-a-hotel deal with Marriott? Chances are MGM Resorts believes it can do better with a partner with the aforementioned database.

Fontainebleau, for example, is suffering mightily because it has neither a hotel or casino database to speak of. It’s ugly.

The “boutique hotel” concept isn’t new for MGM Resorts, as Four Seasons already operates inside Mandalay Bay.

Resorts World has Hilton as a partner, and offers three brand experiences: Crockfords, Conrad and Hilton. Don’t look at us, it’s all pretty baffling.

Caesars Entertainment has a Nobu Hotel. Park MGM has NoMad.

W Las Vegas at SLS
Time to dust off that W from SLS.

Before the SLS deal, W Las Vegas was announced in 2005 as a condo-hotel and casino project off the Strip at Harmon and Koval (on the land where F1’s headquarters now sits). It was intended to be a joint project between Edge Resorts and Starwood. The project was scrapped in 2007.

There were also rumblings of a W hotel on the site of the Wild Wild West casino, owned by Station Casinos. The Wild Wild West has since been demolished. Read more on Wikipedia, the site that single-handedly kicked the lucrative encyclopedia industry to the curb in 2001.

Anyway, there’s been no official announcement of the rebrand of Delano, but we share what we hear so the Las Vegas Review-Journal has something to do (stealing, confirming and later “breaking the story”).

Prior to becoming Delano (pronounced like Franklin Roosevelt’s middle name), the hotel was called THEhotel, possibly the worst hotel name in history. Other than SLS. But whatever.

This means speculation continues about if, and how, MGM Resorts might use the Mirage brand down the road. We love the name, but using it for a hotel or tower would lead to a lot of confusion and rideshare driver road rage. Better to just let Mirage fade into the ether. Or maybe slap it on an app or something, as Boyd has done with its Stardust brand.

What if this rumor doesn’t pan out despite coming from a well-placed source? Delano doesn’t have a casino, so who cares?

More to come.