In Las Vegas, the ultimate sand trap-turned-capital of capitalism, there’s no better byword for sophistication than the Cosmopolitan. Its 20-plus suites, known as the Boulevard Penthouses, are the most coveted rooms in town, largely because they’re priceless. The only way in is by invitation, which means fronting over a million dollars (and preferably two) at the Reserve, the hotel’s private, three-room casino on the 75th floor. It’s a gaming experience so exclusive that not even James Bond could charm his way through the door.
When the resort offered me a staff position serving its penthouses’ high-rollers, roving from butler to bartending stations and everywhere in between, I jumped at the opportunity. And after passing my security clearances, I was initiated into the secret realm of the Reserve, catering to the whims of the world’s wealthiest gamblers. But it wasn’t all popping bottles and cutting cigars—try cleaning up “lucky” piles of rotting fruit, or walking in on nude hotel guests instead.
Think what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Not this time…
Putting the Sin in Sin City
There’s a fine line between letting high-rollers have the run of the house, and indulging all their gaming-adjacent vices. “It’s a judgment-free zone,” explains Leslie Sadovia, Cosmopolitan’s executive director of national casino marketing. “People can come and behave in an extreme manner, and we’re not telling them not to.”
Some big spenders push this to the limit. One repeat guest prefers the suite with a chinchilla-fur hammock; he’s been known to splay himself across it naked, waiting for a butler to find him. Another, a well-known basketball player, enjoys having sex on the morning of his departure while the butlers fastidiously pack up his luggage. And one of the casino’s oldest guests—also one of the only high-rolling women—has garnered a colorful reputation for discarding fur coats (“I’m bored of them!”), and throwing fists in the gaming salon when her luck is waning. Her other favorite pastime: asking the butlers to dress up in pajamas, crawl into bed next to her, and read her bedtime stories. These incidents will hardly get you kicked out—though the staff will periodically step in with slaps on the wrist.
There is one habit that even the brattiest clients tend to avoid: getting blindingly drunk. When you’re gaming at such astronomical dollar values, after all, it’s critical to keep your wits.
How to Have Them at “Hello”
You know the fruit bowl that’s often waiting for you when you check into a fancy hotel room? In a Boulevard Penthouse suite, the value of your welcome amenity might be five or six figures.
Sometimes welcome gifts can include obscure objets d’art or vintage Chanel; the hotel has even hired a full-time chocolatier to create custom-made, edible sculptures inspired by a guest’s Instagram account. But booze is, by far, the most popular option. On my shift, it was more than $1,100 of liquor—a bottle of Macallan and Yamazaki whisky. (“A pretty basic gamer get,” I was told by a colleague.) Occasionally, it’s $14,000 bottles of wine from the Rothschild estate. Louis XIII cognac, priced at $4,300 a bottle, is a far more common ask; one high-roller was so emphatic about having multiple, unopened bottles in his room, the casino team started engraving his name on them to prevent him from reselling them.
High-Roller Stakes, Lowbrow Tastes
Every Boulevard Penthouse guest comes with a rider detailing everything from favorite brands of ice cream to the exact number of minutes guests like their eggs hard-boiled. On one, I spotted these comical instructions: “Guest confuses American and cheddar cheese, so when she orders American please bring her cheddar, but tell her it’s American.”
Which brings me to the pedantic room service tastes of big-spender guests. Standard orders range from green juices to fresh seafood picked out via webcam from the casino’s private aquarium. Off-property requests—which come with a $25-per-hour service fee—are common and most frequently send butlers to such glamorous places as In-N-Out Burger and Target. Kim Mantle, Cosmopolitan’s head of butler services, says she makes two or three trips a week to the mega-mart in search of various of sundries; on my own run there, the shopping list included 10 boxes of Maltesers (the British chocolate candy) and several PlayStation 4 video games.