Vegas is the undisputed bachelor party champ. Guys from all over the country and the world head there for the gambling and the girls. (Vegas has more than 60 working strip clubs and a small army of call girls who are advertised on cards being passed out day and night on the Strip). As of late, some tonier guys are opting for more exotic locales like Cabo or Latvia, but the Vegas Bachelor Party remains the classic, the default for guys who want to give their buddy an appropriately decadent sendoff.

“Vegas is the best place in the world for a bachelor party,” explained a guy I interviewed for my new book BACHELOR PARTY CONFIDENTIAL. “Tons of strip clubs, beautiful women, usually very good weather, gambling—everything in the world you could want.”

You might think that cocktail waitresses, strippers and other nightlife players would welcome these fellas with open wallets. But most of the service-industry people I interviewed said the exact opposite. A manager at one strip club explained, “Bachelor parties just don’t spend the kind of money that other people do! They’re on a budget in a big way, but they want the VIP treatment. And dancers avoid bachelor parties like the plague. A lot of the times, everybody buys one dance for the bachelor. But dancers do not like doing twenty-dollar dances…Because, like on Saturday night, we had a regular come in with some friends and they each had two strippers; that night he spent $21,000 just on the strippers.”

Still there are plenty of businesses that cater to bachelor parties. Perhaps the biggest operation is Vegas VIP. They’ll take care of getting you into a club and a table—for a fee. Of course, there are other options. I talked to a bouncer at Rain who explained, “Anyone can work a deal. A lot of the clubs try to keep a hold on that, but they realize that it’s Vegas and it just kinda happens. The management terrorizes us, like, ‘If you take money, you will get fired.’ But if a guy wants to get past the line, it’s usually twice cover. So if the cover is twenty-five dollars, then it’s fifty dollars to get past the line, and he still has to pay the cover charge.” You got to pay to play…especially in Vegas.