Back in 2000, LVA’s David McKee looked into the Las Vegas-Hawaii connection for now-defunct Casino Executive magazine. Here’s an adapted and abridged version of what he learned:
Everywhere you go in downtown Las Vegas’ California Hotel & Casino, you see signs that proclaim, "Aloha Spoken Here." Slot machines carry names like No-Ka-Oi and Shoka Five Way. Casino mainstays like Wheel of Fortune, Monopoly and Elvis! go begging for action on a weekday morning. But there’s already heavy play in the blackjack and craps pits.
Boyd Gaming has been so long regarded as a Downtown institution that it’s worth remembering back to 1975, when it was the new boy on the block. Its first Downtown property, the California, was set to open. Trouble was, Boyd didn’t have a clientele or a great location. "It was the first major place built off of Fremont Street," recalled former CEO Bill Boyd. "We had 300 rooms and maybe 400 slot machines. Business was very, very tough there at the time."
Added former Boyd exec John Woodrum – who would go on to build the Klondike Sunset Casino – "We were a block off Fremont Street -- there was no way [tourists] were coming down there." Sales-and-marketing man Woodrum found himself with no one to whom he could sell or market his hotel rooms.
Enter patriarch Sam Boyd. "Now, Sam had lived in Hawaii from ’33 to ’39, and run a bingo parlor over there. Sam could play the ukelele and sing those Hawaiian songs, because he’d been a beach boy for six years," during which time he’d befriended Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku (1890-1968), according to Woodrum, who added that the elder Boyd "could speak that language like a Hawaiian."
Sam Boyd told son Bill, "We need a niche market and that’s going to be Hawaii." With that, he began commuting to the Aloha State and putting together packages to bring Hawaiians stateside. "When he said, ‘We’re gonna do it in Hawaii,’" Woodrum remarked, "I said, ‘Sam, that’s 4,000 miles away." Replied Boyd, "You’ve got to remember something: In Hawaii, people get ‘rock fever’ very badly. It’s like being in prison, being on those islands for any long period of time. Plus, they’re all gamblers. All Hawaiians love to gamble, because on the island they have nothing else to do, no other way of entertaining themselves.’"
Or, as Bill Boyd put it, "They’re very cordial, nice people and they have an affinity for gaming. The average American spends three hours at the table. Hawaiians spend six hours. They aren’t near as interested in other tourist destinations, don’t take the trips down to the Grand Canyon, the Valley of Fire, don’t spend near as much time going to the new hotels on the Strip.
"The other thing that is interesting is, most Americans – when they come to Las Vegas – are anxious to try different foods. Hawaiians like to have their own food that they’re familiar with. We provide that. We call it their home away from home."
Sam Boyd and his team, building upon their connections in the travel industry, would fly out to the islands and throw lavish parties for the travel-agency and airline industries, often at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel. Old Sam would ply the guests with sashimi, and flooded the airwaves and newspapers with advertising. "That’s been some [37] years ago," Bill Boyd said. "We’ve always maintained that commitment to the Hawaiian islands and people." That’s why the California, a major corporate property, has the niche-marketed aura of a boutique casino.
Special care is taken to cater to the Hawaiian clientele and to encourage repeat business. In the early days, Sam Boyd had rice cookers and long-stemmed rice placed in every hotel room. "Hawaiians, when they got up in the morning," Woodrum explained, "before they did anything else, they fixed a bowl of rice. Hell, I wouldn’t know that! But Sam knew."
The California also maintained a store selling Hawaiian knickknacks, leased a restaurant serving Polynesian cuisine and made sure that island delicacies were on the menu in its coffee shop. It chartered Hawaiian Airlines flights as part of all-inclusive packages, running DC-10s in and out of McCarran International Airport at 99.5% capacity.
Any craps player who held the dice for more than an hour without throwing seven became a member of the California’s "Golden Arm Club." It’s named after Stanley "Golden Arm" Fujitake, who held the dice for 186 minutes (or 118 rolls) without rolling seven. "We had a tremendous loss that day on the tables," Bill Boyd allowed, but a tradition was born. "We have a number of [players] in that club and every year we have a Golden Arm reunion.
"They like to be recognized and to be your friends," Bill Boyd says of his Hawaiian customers. "The people are very nice there and the weather’s always beautiful." Marketing in Hawaii is "hard work but it’s enjoyable hard work."
Did the younger Bouyd continue his father’s tradition of strumming the ukelele? "I might have tried it a few times," he guffawed, "but that was never one of my things."
So, that's how the trend was established, and today our publisher Anthony Curtis' weekly column is still syndicated to the Honolulu Advertiser, as it has been for many years, and LVA continues to have a sizeable clientele of loyal Hawaiian subscribers.
