Naked Greed

Perhaps, in his more delusional moments, Caesars Entertainment CEO Tom Reeg still thinks he can get $2 billion for the Flamingo on the open market. How else to explain the preposterous levy imposed on Flamingo guests who have the temerity to request an early check-in rather than cool their heels with their luggage in the lobby. The nerve of them! To show who’s boss, Reeg is slapping Flamingo guests with $60 early check-in fees.

To be fair, Las Vegas-bound consumers have bent over and grabbed their ankles for no end of price gouging ever since the Covid-19 lockdown was lifted. Higher table minimums? We’ll pony up! Resort fees? We’ll keep paying ’em! Paid parking? Let us get our credit cards out! Until customers vote with their feet (more of that below), Sin City is going to keep plundering their wallets. Were we not meant to be sheared by Big Gaming, God would not have made us sheep—or so it would seem.

But the early check-in levy for a dowdy Las Vegas Strip resort that hasn’t been hip for at least 25 years seems to represent a breaking point. It certainly went viral in the news media. Maybe Reeg’s braintrust is stuck back in the Nineties (as in the 1890s) and didn’t think word would get around. They certainly didn’t bank on the ubiquity of social media nowadays. But don’t think Caesars is alone in drinking its bathwater: David Danzis of the Las Vegas Review-Journal dug around and found check-in penalties as high as $75 (at Wynncore). Danzis wrote, “Early check-in fees are common at Las Vegas hotels and typically range from $20 to $50.” He added this delicious diss: “The $60 charge by Flamingo is higher than expected for a hotel of its caliber.” (emphasis added)

Given the resort fees and other ‘convenience’ imposts laid on the Vegas customer, perhaps this form of highway robbery has simply gone unnoticed. Now that the dirty secret is out in the open, Big Gaming could secure much goodwill by rescinding the practice. But the casino industry would sooner stoop down to pick up a stray dime from the sewer than curry megabuck favor with its clientele. Perhaps the new catchphrase for Vegas should be, ‘Too Big to Care.’ (Or, more honestly, ‘Too Big to Give a Fuck.’)

Adding to the Flamingo Fee Outrage is the fact that it comes hard upon the disclosure that MGM Resorts International subjects guests to the $25 indignity of charging you for room-service cutlery and drinking glasses. Since MGM expects you to pay 25 bucks not to eat food with your hands, this is an even bigger fuck-you to consumers than the early check-in fee. Since it costs $10 extra to get takeout, they’ve got you coming and going. Perhaps the next step (don’t tell Bill Hornbuckle) will be to simply pre-chew the uncooked grub and spit it into a plastic bag which is then delivered raw to your door. Want the food cooked? Perhaps there will be a surcharge for that outrageous expectation, too. It is no longer just Caesars where the customer almost matters. Now it’s an industry-wide phenomenon, as Big Gaming CEOs have been unable for some time to conceal their contempt for the people who make their compensation packages possbile.

Bad timing? This latest batch of outrages comes at a time when business for Las Vegas Strip hotels is being euphemistically called “soft.” A more-candid phraseology would be ‘trending ominously downward.’ True, Caesars’ rates spiked 17% during an otherwise-unimpressive April. (Cue contumacious check-in levies at also-ran Strip resorts.) Otherwise? May: down. June: down. July: down again. Remember, this is the season when visitation to Las Vegas is supposed to jump UP and room rates along with it. “We could still see improvements, given shorter and shorter Vegas booking windows,” offered Truist Securities analyst Barry Jonas. Still, he had to concede that “We’re generally seeing some deceleration in rates as our survey progresses, potentially as the macro uncertainty weighs on consumer demand.” Darn that pesky economy! Need we mention also that our federal government has essentially told international travelers to go to Hell? They’re taking Washington, D.C. up on that poison-pen invitation.

Ironically, the despised midweek traveler is proving to be Vegas’ saving grace. Last month, weekday room rates fell 8% at Caesars Entertainment properties but ascended 12% at MGM Resorts International ones. Weekends were not so fortunate, seeing a 8% rate decline at MGM and an 18% plunge at Caesars. As for July, Jonas characterized the picture as “less bad … but still down.”

As always happens when the Vegas economy goes into the crapper, Big Gaming has belatedly rediscovered its love for the locals player. Now, The Strat isn’t our idea of a luxury staycation by any means, but it’s rolled out some OK-at-best room discounts (nothing impressive) and free admission to its observation deck. Maybe that will move the needle for Golden Gaming, owner of The Strat.

That’s among a lengthy list of discounts and resort-fee waivers being advertised locally. A couple of the offers are fairly George, although the Downtown Grand could do—needs to do—a lot better than a 10% room discount. At least they’re also waiving the resort fee … which makes you wonder how necessary it is for the industry to survive, as it claims. Still, we were a locals player, we’d be more inclined to take an offer from Vegas-friendly Station Casinos, rather than from some fickle Strip operator. Unfortunately, except for Station and Penn Entertainment‘s M Resort, locals casinos are being slow to get in on the discounting action. (We’re looking at you, Boyd Gaming.)

At any rate, given the undisguised disdain Las Vegas is showing for tourists—and the ubiquity of casinos throughout the United States—travelers would do well to gamble and vacation someplace other than Sin City, at least until it comes to its senses.

On the plus side, several casinos got some love for their architecture this week. Between its justly celebrated fountains and its Dale Chihuly glass sculptures, Bellagio topped the list, a classic for a quarter century and still evidently unsurpassed. That being said, if we could think of a plausible rival for #1, it would be Marina Bay Sands, so gorgeously showcased in Crazy Rich Asians. The Singapore government reportedly made Sheldon Adelson go back to the drawing board (it’s said he wanted to do another The Venetian) and architect Moshe Safdie delivered a winner. Meanwhile, the world’s largest casino, Venetian Macao, dwarfed its Las Vegas progenitor literally and figuratively, coming in third.

Caesars Palace is such a stylistc hodgepodge at this point that we’re a little skeptical of awarding it fourth place, but there you have it. Somewhere, Jay Sarno is smiling. Except for The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, the other honorees were all overseas (including a non-gaming resort in Dubai). The conclusion? We can and should do better. Or should we? If fugly Wynn Palace in Macao makes the honor roll, something is awry.