When it comes to marketing to LGBT customers per se, some of the big players in Las Vegas still keep their cards close to the vest. Or, as Boyd Gaming spokesman David Strow puts it, "We don’t do anything to target that specific [LGBT] demographic. We welcome business from all demographics." And none of Boyd's Las Vegas properties has a dedicated wedding chapel, although some, like Sam's Town and Suncoast, promote their generic event spaces for weddings and receptions, but the customer is responsible for organizing the event and hiring the minister.
However, even when Huntington Press published Gay Vegas: A Guide to the Other Side of Sin City, back in 2007, author Steve Friess, who founded the Las Vegas chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, observed in the introduction to Chapter 11, "Fun Weddings in Vegas," that "Even as the Nevada electorate stitched a same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution in 2002, Las Vegas hotels and attractions were opening some of their chapel doors to gay and lesbian couples to hold emotionally meaningful—if legally irrelevant—nuptials." He goes on to list some suggestions for fun wedding packages, which back then included getting married aboard the HMS Britannica surrounded by pirates and sirens on the lagoon at Treasure Island, where it was also possible to "have a pirate swing down on a rope from the crow's nest to hand off the wedding rings."
In a Q&A session with Ron DeCar, a partner in the only gay-owned wedding chapel in Las Vegas which opened in 1999, the owner revealed, however, that "most of our gay and lesbian weddings are traditional. They're usually doing it for the first time, so they're not going to want to do a themed wedding. Themed weddings, I think, are mostly for people who want to renew their vows."
Freiss and his partner were married at the Palms, shortly before Gay Vegas was published, and in the introduction to the (now-dated) guide, the author exclaims how "The Strip, it seems, has seen the light. Such hotels as New York-New York, Luxor, Paris, and Wynn all advertise heavily in gay publications. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority had a float in New York City's Gay Pride Parade in 2006 for the first time, complete with showgirls and beefcake imported to Manhattan from major Strip shows for the occasion."
Still, when it comes to the specifics of nuptials, we note that Chapter 11 comprises a mere four pages (only two-thirds the size of the section dedicated to spas) and, as referenced above, when the book came out and for many years thereafter, the only wedding options open to LGBT couples in Sin City were in the form of symbolic commitment ceremonies.
Fast forward to October 9, 2014 and, having thwarted a last-ditch blocking effort by the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage, the ban on same-sex marriage in Nevada was finally overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Four months later, on January 8 of this year, Clark County issued its 1,000th same-sex marriage license.
Today, in terms of online promoting, the most 'out' company is probably Caesars Entertainment. If you scroll down to the footer of any of their Las Vegas resorts' websites, you will find a link called LGBT Pride. Click on it and it will take you to a page declaring "We Always Root for 2 of a Kind" and extolling CET's credentials as the "premier casino company for the LGBT community," both in terms of employees and guests, and specifically promoting Caesars Palace and Paris-Las Vegas as gay-marriage destinations.
Caesars was fighting the good fight as far back as 2008, when it was still Harrah’s Entertainment. Three weeks before the California Supreme Court legitimized gay marriage in 2008, Harrah’s was brainstorming a "Marry in San Diego, Honeymoon in Paris" ad campaign. Same-sex couples could tie the knot at Harrah’s Rincon and then enjoy a travel package to Paris-Las Vegas. The previous summer, Harrah’s Entertainment had begun advertising in gay-themed Details magazine.
MGM Resorts International was close on its rivals' heels, promoting Luxor as its designated gay-friendly resort destination. (Both companies testified in support of gay marriage before the Nevada Legislature in 2013.) The hotel has long had a dedicated LGBT microsite, where today it offers an exclusive 20%-off room-rate package themed around its long-running and famed "Temptation Sundays" pool parties and inviting gay customers to sign up for dedicated emails in order to be "the first to hear about special events and promos for Las Vegas’ ultimate LGBT destination." It also highlights property information specific to other perceived areas of interest to gay travelers, including nightlife, shopping, and gay and lesbian weddings and commitment ceremonies.
Returning to c. 2008, at that time LGBT customers represented a $64.5 million travel market and Las Vegas was one of their top-three destinations, along with New York City and San Francisco. According to Harrah’s research shared with the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time, "Gay and lesbian travelers to the Strip come as couples, same-sex couples spend more per day than the average general market couple, and gay and lesbian travelers are loyal to businesses who extend a welcoming environment." That sounds like the profile of a customer you’d like to target and savvy Strip resorts did just that: Today you'll also find dedicated LGBT microsites including Tropicana's troplv.com/las-vegas/gay-hotel, where you'll find details of the "Go Out" LGBTQ room package from the annual host of the "Sin City Shootout LGBTQ Athletic Event of the Year" (coming Jan. 14-18, 2016) and Wynn Resorts' wynnpride.com (although we note that what has been dubbed the "gayest hotel in Las Vegas" doesn't appear to offer anything special to the LGBTQ customer and only intimates that gay weddings are available via a single same sex-couple shot on a page with dead links to alleged details about what's included and the pricing).
Fast-forward seven years and now gay marriage has been legal in Nevada since Oct. 9, 2014. The R-J’s Adelaide Chen reported that "The influx of same-sex marriages comes at a time when the marriage rate is declining nationally and ... marriages in Clark County are at their lowest levels in decades." The county clerk of Clark County issues 34 percent of marriage licenses to gay Nevada couples, we have learned, with fourteen dollars of the $77 marriage fee going into a fund for marketing Clark County as a wedding destination for same-sex partners, although the exact plan is nebulous at this point. "We still are the wedding capital of the world, and we'd like to be the LGBT wedding capital of the world as well," Clark County Clerk Lynn Goya told Chen. Travel-booking site Vegas.com offers a full page dedicated to gay weddings, with recommendations for the best chapels and package-types on offer, ranging from a $99 budget special, to something "elegant and legendary," via a Vegas-signature Elvis-themed affair.
The wedding rosters in Nevada could also be swelled by those couples who already enjoy the Silver State’s domestic-partnership rights and might want to up-convert to married status (although they enjoy the legal benefits of marriage already). With a large-scale wedding costing an average of $27,688, the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates that Nevada weddings could grow to a $52 million industry by 2017 … and that’s if half of Nevada’s same-sex couples don’t choose to tie the knot. Clark County doesn’t keep tabs on the exact number of marriages performed daily but Public Information Officer Dan Kulin says it averages 10 same-sex marriage licenses per day. "Gay and lesbian people are quite mobile and tend not to grow up in the same communities," said Community Marketing’s David Paisley, "and tend not to get married in the same communities, making them open to travel."
Tomorrow: Branding Las Vegas as the LGBT place to be.
