Las Vegas is known at times for being a place of questionable business practices and ethics, but this has to be a new low. There’s a “new” hotel in Las Vegas — except it doesn’t actually exist, and the photos used to market it are AI. Then guests end up actually staying at an old hotel that gets bad reviews. I can’t imagine this is even legal…
In this post:
OYO Hotel Las Vegas & Palette Las Vegas look mighty similar
OYO Hotel and Casino Las Vegas is a budget friendly property that doesn’t generally get good reviews. On TripAdvisor, it’s ranked number 240 of 260 hotels in Las Vegas.
So here’s where the story gets interesting. If you go to online travel agencies like booking.com, you’ll see a new property named Palette Las Vegas. What does that have to do with OYO Las Vegas? Well, the two “properties” look remarkably similar.
Below is an exterior picture of OYO Las Vegas.
Below is an exterior picture of Palette Las Vegas.
Below is a picture of the OYO Las Vegas pool.
Below is a picture of the Palette Las Vegas pool.
Wild coincidence, eh? You want to know what’s even wilder? The properties have the same address — 117 E. Tropicana Avenue. What’s going on here? Did the OYO Las Vegas rebrand as the Palette Las Vegas? No, the answer is much more absurd than that…
Palette Las Vegas is a completely imaginary hotel
A TikToker shared her experience searching for hotels on booking.com. She specifically didn’t want to book the OYO Las Vegas due to the bad reviews, particularly around cleanliness. So she decided to book Palette Las Vegas, figuring that it looked a bit nicer, while still being reasonably priced.
She received the confirmation, and upon arriving in Las Vegas, she headed to the hotel. However, when she arrived at the address on the confirmation, she only saw OYO Las Vegas, and not Palette Las Vegas. So she kept circling the block, thinking maybe she was missing something, before calling the hotel. They told her to proceed into OYO for check-in.
So once at check-in, she asked what was going on, given that they booked Palette Las Vegas. She was reportedly told that Palette Las Vegas doesn’t exist, and “they just put the listing up to see which ad would gain more traction.”
In other words, Palette Las Vegas is fake, and AI images are being used to pretend it’s a property that’s different than OYO Las Vegas.
I mean, I’m no lawyer, but I can’t imagine there’s any planet on which this is legal, and isn’t outright false advertising. What I’m curious about is the extent to which online travel agencies are in on this, vs. the hotel owners just trying to pull a fast one on them as well.
Bottom line
OYO Las Vegas gets pretty poor reviews, and obviously that’s impacting demand for the property. Rather than improving, the hotel seems to be trying a new sales tactic. One of Las Vegas’ newest hotels is the Palette Las Vegas, which… doesn’t actually exist. It’s actually OYO Las Vegas, but with a new name and AI altered photos.
So when you book Palette Las Vegas, you’re actually staying at OYO Las Vegas, because it literally doesn’t exist. This is just insane, and I have to imagine that even the online travel agencies are getting scammed here. I don’t necessarily think that highly of their ethics, but I can’t imagine they’re open to just selling totally fake hotels in this way.
What do you make of this Las Vegas hotel scam?
How is this legal?
Something similar happened to me last week in Montreal. My partner and I booked a room at Le Sand and Stone hotel, which seemed to have been recently remodeled from a not nice place to a mid-range hotel. After we arrived, it turns out that remodeling was all done through AI, and in fact, was still basically a flop house. We canceled and booked another hotel at significant expense.
The Le Sand and Stone...
Something similar happened to me last week in Montreal. My partner and I booked a room at Le Sand and Stone hotel, which seemed to have been recently remodeled from a not nice place to a mid-range hotel. After we arrived, it turns out that remodeling was all done through AI, and in fact, was still basically a flop house. We canceled and booked another hotel at significant expense.
The Le Sand and Stone has been refusing to provide a refund, and Hotels.com is also refusing to return our money until they get a refund from Le Sand and Stone. It is a mess, but we are going to continue pursuing a refund because this is nothing more than a scam.
This is hilarious.
It took me 3 months and 30 phone calls to get my $100 security deposit back. These people are criminals!
Lol even in India nobody uses Oyo except the questionable ones looking for a hotel by the hour... Another one of the Softbank backed white elephants.
OYO is an ultra-low-budget hotel chain in India. Experience largely depends on who owns the property based on what I have heard, although I have never actually stayed at one.
Would any one here honestly book this though?
I Hope to God (Vishnu) the Indians do not own this SCAM. They are the shadiest of All the scammers. I can just Imagine Indian Mgmt Family running around in Slippers and "Dhoti"(a wrap around your S item), All this while the smell of Indian Curry is in every room, And they try to sell the Left over Food from the Families Meals.
Wait I booked Nobu and had the same experience.
"I received the confirmation, and upon arriving in Las Vegas, I headed to the hotel. However, when I arrived at the address on the confirmation, I only saw Caesars Palace, and not Nobu. So I kept circling the block, thinking maybe I was missing something, before calling the hotel. They told me to proceed into Caesars for check-in."
I personally think OYO is less scam than...
Wait I booked Nobu and had the same experience.
"I received the confirmation, and upon arriving in Las Vegas, I headed to the hotel. However, when I arrived at the address on the confirmation, I only saw Caesars Palace, and not Nobu. So I kept circling the block, thinking maybe I was missing something, before calling the hotel. They told me to proceed into Caesars for check-in."
I personally think OYO is less scam than resort fees.
If Vegas can't fix resort fees. This OYO is staying.
I wouldn't expect Booking.com to do anything quickly. I was getting scammed a while back and tried to contact Booking.com urgently – they replied 4–6 months later!
Didn't US Airways try the same tactic by renaming to American Airlines?
How is this any different than all the restaurants on Uber Eats and other platforms creating fake restaurant names and photos to sell the same items for higher prices in the actual restaurant? It should all be shut down but sadly there no ethics or enforcement anymore.
The Palette has zero'd out availability. I guess the game is up?
Kinda surprising that Oyo didn't go with their premium US brand: Motel 6.
(Which tells you all you need to know about Oyo)
I always think OYO means on your own. They will not help you once you check in. You are screwed.
Absurdly shady. They should be deplatformed by all of the booking engines. That egregious level of violation of T&C should be a lifetime ban for the property / owner.
Even better, check out the reviews for Hotel Palette on the booking dot com site
The recent reviews claim that the Palette Hotel does not exist. Each of those reviews has been responded to by an obvious AI chatbot. The best part? They emails 'from management' are all signed 'Sincerely, Team OYO.'
Hah thats actually pretty funny
As it turns out, even booking a hotel in Vegas is a bit of a gamble these days.
I know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I'm happy to see that it doesn't count for this kind of malpractice.
Hotel owner scummy behavior. Too bad our current DOJ looks the other way for those that contribute to the orange king.
This is just wild. Hopefully the travel platforms shut it down quickly.
people book without some basic research is wild... always check multiple platforms and sort review from newest to oldest, plus need to contact hotel directly to make sure 3rd party booking are in their system
Before it was Hooter's (and long before resort fees and paid parking) it was the San Remo. When hotel searching an OYO property is always amongst the lowest-rated, regardless of country. Anything OYO is a hard stop.
Is this part of the Indian hotel chain that owns Motel 6?
Like everything else in Vegas, it's a scam. If scammers decided to hold a convention outside of India Vegas would be the place for them.
So, better or worse than Reno? Atlantic City? Biloxi? (Yikes.)
For anyone who does not know. OYO aka OYO Rooms is an Indian budget hotel chain with 43000 properties both independent and hotel owned brands, though seems to be of very questionable quality judging by the selections I see on the website
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyo_Rooms
Pretty sure Oyo is the former Hooters hotel, this AI is so bad it looks like it belongs on VFTW!
That's definitely the old Hooters. The palm trees on the side are the dead giveaway.
No one has cracked down on ghost kitchens which play the same game with 10 brands for the same food, so this is the logical next step
Add this to the Ulysses-length list of reasons to avoid Las Vegas at all costs for everything ever in the history of everhood. One wonders how much the "resort" fee is at the OyoPalette luxury motor lodge resort inn.
Oh, dear Willing... you see, checking into the 'OyoPalette' is a vibrant literary journey... the delusional quest of Don Quixote searching for luxury, the moral decay of The Brothers Karamazov at the front desk, and a 'resort' fee that makes War and Peace seem like a quick, painless read...
*Willy (sheesh, fellas, we really do need that 5-minute-edit feature, like, yesterday...)
@ 1990 -- The five-minute edit feature might not be coming yesterday, but it might be coming next week. Stay tuned! ;-)
Woah! That's a B.F.D. Is that only gonna be for members? If so, I may need to register. Bah!
Any idea why I'm no longer able to use the 'Helpful' or 'Yowzers' buttons? It's been like it for days. If I click on it, it makes the pulsing visual but doesn't register as having been clicked. Several days it's been like that now.
A *pulsing visual* would seem appropriate for “!! Yowzers!”
@Jimmy Unfortunately looks like there was some back-end update that messed up login states. If you log out then back in, things should work again.