Even as MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren and Treasure Island owner Phil Ruffin are preparing to stomp out any incipient recovery in Las Vegas by jacking up room rates, words of restraint are coming from the unlikeliest of sources: Mayor Oscar Goodman. Quoth Hizzoner: "There are a lot of people [here] now; I understand they may not be spending as much as they have in the past."
(And if Ruffin really doesn't want $50/night customers, as he's said, I can inform him that Harrah's Las Vegas would be very happy to take them off his hands this very evening. As for Columbia Sussex's Westin Casuarina, those guys are living in a f***ing dream world, demanding $109 for a room on a night when I can get one at Caesars Palace for but a dollar more. Hmmmm … Westin Casuarina, Caesars Palace … Casuarina, Caesars … such a tough choice.)
Goodman was counseling moderation in the context of praising what he called "very conservative" projections by the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority. The recent double-whammy of low occupancies and ADRs obviously sucks, but if occupancy truly is beginning to ramp back up, there'd be no better way to nip that in the bud than by repricing as though a full-blown recovery were underway.
As for the LVCVA, it sure didn't waste any time ditching the "bargain destination" message in favor of the same old "Party like it's 2006" crap. Do you get the feeling that selling a message of affordability really chaps the LVCVA's ass? (That band of brothers and sisters from Cranfils Gap, Tex., seems to have done a quick disappearing act. Anybody seen them lately?)
The indiscreet charm of the douchebagerie appears more to the LVCVA's liking. According the authority's guru-on-retainer, Billy Vassiliadias, customers seek "some comfort that this is the Vegas they've always known and loved." You mean that high-end-centric, $500-for-a-bottle-of-Absolut-and-some-cranberry-juice Vegas? Yeah, that's the ticket.
Goodman gets it. Too bad Vassiliadias apparently doesn't.
