The city’s entire fleet of limousines has been booked, often for 30 percent over the regular rate, and one of the few available minibuses would cost a company’s marketing department $4,656 over four days, according to one firm, Las Vegas Transportation.

Restaurants are sold out months in advance. Craftsteak, the star chef Tom Colicchio’s steakhouse at the MGM Grand, is booked solid for the first three days and says it will do 40 percent more business than usual. The “surf and turf” tasting menu (Kobe beef, lobster and salmon) costs $135 a plate, but the restaurant asks for a minimum bill of $3,000 to $4,000 from large groups.

Putting on parties is not cheap either. On Tuesday night, Dell is renting out Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. Such a party, including music, food, premium liquor and photos of guests with Lucille Ball and George Washington, can cost $60,000.

On many nights during C.E.S. there are miniconventions in hotel ballrooms, like tomorrow’s Digital Experience at Caesars Palace. Exhibition tables at the event go for up to $12,000 to companies like Sony and Microsoft, which seek to court the attending journalists.

Chris O’Malley, a partner at Pepcom, the company that runs Digital Experience, says the cost of operating his event at C.E.S. goes up 20 percent each year. As attendance grows, he said, prices for food, drinks, labor and ballroom rentals rise, too.

“Las Vegas is the ultimate supply-and-demand city,” he said. “The cost to host 1,500 hungry, thirsty people during the most expensive week in the city is now a little staggering.”

Yet pretty much every company in the intermingling fields of consumer electronics, entertainment, automotive gadgets and video games arrives for C.E.S. and takes part in some way, even if it is not directly on the showroom floor. I.B.M., which says its computer business is growing indistinguishable from consumer electronics, is returning to the convention center after a 10-year hiatus and renting 3,600 square feet.

On the other hand, DirecTV, after renting a booth for the last decade, is leaving the show floor amid concerns about rising costs and what its co-president, John Suranyi, calls “the hype and clutter of the experience.” Instead, it is renting a ballroom at Caesars Palace and holding its own events during the show.

Some companies clearly do not mind the chaos. Monster Cable, a company in Brisbane, Calif., that makes home entertainment products that in any other context would appear numbingly dull — like cables connecting audio and video equipment — leaps at the annual opportunity to catch a bit of Las Vegas glamour.

This year it will put 140 employees up at the Venetian Hotel, operate two separate booths and six private demo rooms at the convention center, and put on a Monday night concert at the Venetian Palace that will unite the jazz greats George Benson and Al Jarreau.

The company would not specify its overall C.E.S. expenditure but said that it devoted 10 to 15 percent of its annual marketing budget to the show.

Monster’s chief executive, Noel Lee, said the investment was worthwhile because the show gave his employees a singular goal and deadline. “If it weren’t for C.E.S., we could not have grown the company the way we have,” he said.

Many companies say the show actually saves them money by allowing sales representatives to meet all their prospective customers in one place, instead of taking multiple business trips later in the year.

“There is an amazing ability for a small company like us to go in and be able to meet with senior executives all at once,” said Singu Srinivas, co-founder of HiWired, a three-year-old company from Needham, Mass., offering technical support to consumers and small companies.

Last year at C.E.S., HiWired scored a promising partnership with the retailer OfficeMax after Mr. Srinivas met its executives at a cocktail party and went out with them the next night for an informal dinner. “The nature of meetings is very different in Las Vegas,” Mr. Srinivas said.

This year, HiWired will bring six of its employees and will pay $20,000 to attend C.E.S. and rent a table at a press event, ShowStoppers, on Monday night.

For some attendees, C.E.S. is not just expensive and essential — it is also a tad bittersweet. Jason Chudnofsky, who will attend this year on behalf of the trade show and publishing firm Pulvermedia, ran the Comdex conference for 16 years before it imploded in 2003 after the technology bust. Many of the companies, speakers and attendees have since migrated to C.E.S.

Mr. Chudnofsky thinks that even though the same growing pains that afflicted his show also plague C.E.S. — overcrowding, draconian room rates and grueling convention floor walks — the annual Consumer Electronics Show is not going away anytime soon.

“The reason is simple,” he said. “There is no other event that can take its place and bring the entire industry together like C.E.S.”

Read more at LA Times.