Allowing for the context that one’s hotels fill up faster when only 25%-50% of the rooms are being rented, MGM Resorts International seems to be enjoying a honeymoon with its customer base. Its Las Vegas Strip 
resorts are reopening, in most cases, well ahead of expectations. Not only is Excalibur returning June 11 and Aria on July 1, several other hotels have been ticketed for resumption of business. They are Luxor (June 25), Mandalay Bay (July 1) and Four Seasons (July 1). Still no word on Park MGM, Vdara or The Mirage, the latter of which MGM is rumored to be shopping. CEO Bill Hornbuckle stressed the imperative of adding jobs, saying, “We are eager to get more of our employees back to work and enhance the Las Vegas experience with additional resorts.” Self-parking will continue to be free but there will be no valet service. (Bad news if you’re a valet.)
Not to be left behind, Caesars Entertainment is throwing open the doors to The Linq‘s casino floor tomorrow, along with six Linq restaurants, three at Caesars Palace and three at Harrah’s Las Vegas. If you’re looking for a bargain, Caesars Palace is advertising rooms for $67 a night, and yet … you could stay at The Strat for as little as $15/night or the Golden 
Nugget for $33/night (our favorite savings of the bunch). Also, people must be still staying away from the Vegas High Roller, as CZR is knocking ticket prices down as far as $15 a ride—still too much by half. Resorts World Las Vegas, meanwhile, is thinking upscale, planning to anchor a vast entertainment complex with a Zouk Nightclub, off which it will play a beach club, restaurant, Asian food street and other amenities. Some of the latter will be spinoffs of eateries already found at Genting Highlands in Malaysia. Resorts World LV has to be hoping that social distancing in no longer the rule a year from now, especially since the $4.3 billion resort will be the costliest ever built on the Strip.
We’ve never bought anything at Miracle Mile Shops but you can, now that it’s reopened, albeit with briefer hours. Restaurants available for the diner range from (mediocre) Cabo Wabo, where the Strip view is the best thing on the menu, to Oyster Bay Seafood & Wine. And Subway. Yes, there’s something for every price point, always a good thing in Vegas.
* On the other side of the country, if the Ghermezian clan had managed to wangle a casino for their American Dream mega-mall, as they once hoped to do, maybe that would have eased its financial woes—but not much. The high-pressure developers are currently groaning under a $5 billion debt burden. The Coronavirus shutdown caught American Dream broad amidships, hitting the Triple Five project a week before its retail wing was due to open. In case the name “Ghermazian” doesn’t ring a bell, these are the folks behind the Mall of America (a giant piece of fly paper for white trash and gangbangers). Bloomberg reports the Triple Five business model “isn’t made for a world in which people desperately want to avoid one another.”
Adds retail consultant Nick Egelanian, “They are enclosed gathering places, they have a large tourist component and they have communal entertainment. These things are not going to work for a very long time.” The Azerbaijani business family made its name in the manufacture of 
Persian rugs. This time it looks like they’re going to need a magic carpet. It was formerly known as Xanadu or—if you were then-Gov. Chris Christie (R)—“the ugliest damn building in New Jersey.” Since one of its investors was bungling Colony Capital, it’s no wonder that trouble loomed. 90% of American Dream is leased but that’s no good when your shuttered for Covid-19 and, pledged as collateral, two of Triple Five’s other mega-malls are at risk, including the Mall of America, which has missed two mortgage payments. The family’s net worth has withered from $2.5 billion to $650 million. As Egelanian says, “They bet the farm.” Too bad it came up snake eyes.
* You may recall Vasil “The Skull” Bozhkov, a gambling mogul under indictment in Bulgaria for myriad crimes, including four murders for hire. Although currently exiled in Dubai, he’s planning to take a page from the Donald Trump playbook by coming home and running for president of Bulgaria. Said The Skull, “We need a new political project. Power must be seized from [Boyko] Borissov.” Bozhkov should fit right in with what Bloomberg describes as “the European Union’s poorest and most corrupt country.” Borissov is plagued with his own corruption charges as well as an economy wiped out by Covid-19. (And you thought we had it bad.) Bozhkov accuses Borissov of being on the take from him, which the latter naturally denies.
Bozhkov’s empire met a speedy downfall when law enforcement raided his businesses last January. His lottery business was nationalized, and he was charged with attempted rape, the illegal possession of antiquities and influence peddling. Like a European Stanley Ho, Bozhkov emerged from a post-Communism turf war, clashing with rivals like “The Crocodile” and “The Beaver.” American diplomats tagged him “Bulgaria’s most infamous gangster.” President Rumen Radev is dangerously complacent about The Skull’s latest ambition, calling it “not serious” and “hard to accomplish.” Stranger things have happened.
