Yes, the world’s largest Hooters is open for business, poolside at the Palms. But, just as the existence of a Planet Hollywood casino-hotel didn’t cause the Planet Hollywood restaurant in the Forum Shops to close, the augmentation of the Palms with the Hooters brand won’t affect the casino of the same name. It’s in no danger of closing.
Last spring, it was bruited about (for the umpteenth time) that Hooters would be rebranded. This time, Holiday Inn was the purported new face of the hotel. According to the VegasChatter.com blog, "current rooms will be upgraded to the standards of Holiday Inn hotels … Again, I heard the older rumor that the bungalow buildings (the two-story buildings that surround the pool) would be torn down to make room for a much larger and improved swimming pool area." But the Hooters restaurant would continue as before, as it is the most profitable Hooters in the U.S.
A fortnight later, Hooters Casino Hotel was suddenly sold in a surprise, $54 million transaction. Re-branding plans were put on hold as New York-based Trinity Hotel Investments took title to the property, although the Las Vegas Sun’s John Katsilometes, who broke the story, wrote that Trinity is "expected to change the Hooters name," probably to a Crown Plaza or a DoubleTree by Hilton. However, there has been no movement on that front since early May.
Ironically, it was thought that a Hooters-branded casino would be a slam dunk in Vegas. But, as you point out, Sin City is already so racy that Hooters Casino Hotel seemed tame by comparison and the concept quickly flopped, sending the property into bankruptcy. The Palms is risking far less by simply putting a Hooters restaurant (now the third in town) into its resort as one amenity among many.
As an aside, the Palms’ Hooters has taken the spot of the short-lived Heraea sports lounge, the demise of which served to emphasize two Las Vegas lessons. First, don’t identify your product via a name that no one knows how to say: witness the rebranding of former show La Femme to the prosaic but eminently pronounceable MGM Grand’s Crazy Horse Paris, or the parallel demise of Xishi, an Asian-restaurant concept from the same group behind Heraea, which was scrapped before it even opened at the Palms.
The second salutary takeaway is that attempting to lure in an "unnatural" demographic via pandering to them with a gimmick does not appear to be a winning formula here. Heraea was named for the Heraean Games -- the first sanctioned (and recorded) women's athletic competition to be held in the stadium at Olympia, dedicated to the goddess Hera -- in an effort to make this a female-friendly sports lounge. It failed, just as Eva Longoria’s SHe by Morton’s "female-friendly" steakhouse concept tanked at CityCenter’s Crystals. This, we strongly suspect, was not simply due to failed health inspections, but because the idea of serving smaller portions to female guests seems (to us, at least) to be both ridiculous and somewhat insulting at the same time.
