There is no Harrah's Tunica, on account of the hotel-casino having been permanently closed back on June 2 of this year.
It was in late March this year that Caesars Entertainment announced that it would be closing one of its three Mississippi properties -- the largest in the state -- citing onerous taxes, and the fact that the casino had been losing money, as the key reasons for the decision. Although the company's Horseshoe Tunica and Tunica Roadhouse properties remain open, the closure of Harrah's was symptomatic of consistently falling revenues in recent years in the Mississippi gaming market, mirroring a similar state of affairs in Atlantic City, where CET recently announced that its Showboat casino will also close this summer. Caesars Entertainment's corporate financial problems (see QoD 7/3/14, et. al.) leave no leeway for propping up economically unviable properties and prior efforts to sell the Mississippi casino proved unsuccessful.
Harrah’s Tunica was opened as The Grand Casino Tunica, back in 1996, by Grand Casinos, Inc., headed by Minnesota businessman and poker player Lyle Berman (once a part-owner of the Stratosphere). The first hotel tower, which featured an art deco theme, was not added until the following year. The property was purchased in 1998 by Park Place Entertainment, which went on to become Harrah's Entertainment and then CET.
By 2001, two more hotel towers had been added, although they were some distance from the casino and connected by a shuttle service, bringing the total number of rooms and suites at time of closure to 1,356. Other upgrades over the years included the addition of a spa, convention center, RV park, golf course, and the Harrah's Event Center entertainment venue.
While the U.S. economy in general was suffering as a result of the Great Recession, the situation in the Tunica area was exacerbated by 2011 floods that caused all area casinos to shut down temporarily, a blow from which that market never recovered. Between 2008 and the decision to close Harrah's Tunica, "foot traffic" for casinos in the region fell more than 60 percent, while the property's casino revenues dropped from $1.16 billion in 2006 to $723 million in 2013. On the decision to close, Caesars Entertainment regional president R. Scott Barber commented back in May that, "We feel bad about the ultimate outcome, but it's a good business decision for the long-term future of the company." And it may well not be the last such move in that market, where the general manager of the relatively successful Gold Strike (an MGM Resorts International property) recently commented that "I don't know if we've seen the bottom."
As to the fate of the shuttered property and what CET intends to do with it, time will tell, with options including preserving the casino license in the hope of better times in the future. For the time being, however, the closure leaves some 1,300 people without a job.
