They call for desperate measures, it’s said. MGM Resorts International has just rolled out a heckuva bargain play. If you can afford a two-night stay at Aria or Vdara between Sept. 24 and Dec. 23, and you can find a round-trip airfare to Vegas that’s $350 or less, MGM will comp your airfare. This would appear to confirm scuttlebutt that MGM is having a hell of a time filling those rooms. By the way, does the odious spread of “resort fees” mean that Vegas hotels aren’t trying to upsell rooms or just aren’t having any luck at it?
Out in Connecticut, “Foxwoods needs more out of its MGM hotel and casino, [Foxwoods Resort Casino President Bill] Sherlock said. Foxwoods plans to jointly market with MGM to build up that property and use of MGM’s presence in Las Vegas, especially to bring in conventions.” But if MGM is hinging upbeat Las Vegas Strip forecasts on convention business there, why promote Foxwoods as a de facto rival?
Mixed message: While acknowledging that the “age of gaming has passed” for the depleted Lake Tahoe market (down 13% last month), the backers of Boulder Bay spa hotel plan to build a casino anyway. Best-case scenario, the prospect of new casino product in Tahoe brings some gamblers back to the area, though not enough to fully recoup steep revenue losses. With the Horizon slated for extinction, Boulder Bay will also absorb the lost jobs and then some, one hopes.
The house loses … big. Neurotic, indicted, tantrum-prone, high-rolling Omar Siddiqui (left) just took Mohegan Sun for $10 million in unpaid markers. The fault isn’t Siddiqui’s but that of sloppy and/or credulous casino bosses who handed out mega-markers “without so much as writing an IOU on a cocktail napkin,” according to the high-strung whale’s attorney. As the late Samuel Goldwyn sagely observed, a verbal contract isn’t worth paper on which it’s written.
Doubtless some high-ranking Mohegan Sun exec will take the fall for this, especially at a time when the casino is on its uppers. (The botched markers cover an amount large enough to pay each of the 355 sacked workers $28,000 for a year.) If you’ll recall, then-Planet Hollywood President Michael Mecca made a precipitous exit shortly after the Siddiqui scandal broke, bringing Planet Ho bad publicity it didn’t need. (Mecca subsequently landed on his feet in Macao.)
Tamares keeps us guessing. The local dailies continue to hew to Tamares Group‘s official narrative about why it’s shutting down both Plaza Hotel towers simultaneously for renovation. However, a reliable source says that one hotel-renovation firm that’s done quite a lot of work in the locals-casino market, as well as on the Strip, hasn’t heard from Tamares about bidding for the job. Unless the remodel’s already been contracted elsewhere and the lucky winner is being kept under wraps, Tamares is cutting it pretty fine.
Goldwynisms –
Recounted by filmmaker Garson Kanin in the book Hollywood
http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/goldwynisms_kanin.htm
“”I would like to think that Goldwyn said, ” A verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” I doubt that he did.”
~~~
From the story:
“In January 2009, a federal grand jury in California returned an 11-count indictment charging Siddiqui with wire fraud, money laundering, forfeiture of wire fraud proceeds and forfeiture of money laundering proceeds.”
This is a criminal case, involving Las Vegas casinos, among others. I assume it can continue, right?
~~~
“Tamares keeps us guessing.” I still say they’re going to sell it, one way or another, without reopening the towers. They’ve wrung out all the profit they can from the hotel without investing renovation dollars, so whether it falls down or is imploded – they don’t care. Next up, the Vegas Club.
It’s really a shame. I wonder if Boyd would be interested, if the (depressed) price was right?
“This would appear to confirm scuttlebutt that MGM is having a hell of a time filling those rooms. By the way, does the odious spread of “resort fees” mean that Vegas hotels aren’t trying to upsell rooms or just aren’t having any luck at it?”
I’m ignorant about how the high-end resorts work, but I get the impression that they have maybe two tiers of hotel rooms: standard deluxe & ultra-deluxe, with “resort fee amenities” charged to the former, and maybe waived for the latter’s guests. Am I wrong?
(Whale accommodations are a separate category; they don’t count.)
This brings up a question I asked before – here or somewhere else: Are any of the new CityCenter-type hotel/condo joints thinking of renting out their unsold, empty condo units as if they were upscale apartments with 1/2/6/12 month leases?
Gee I don’t know the City Center promo doesn’t seem that desperate to me. The airfare is on the return visit so they are getting two visits out of the promotion, a total of 4 nights at the rack rate minus the 350. A number of respondents take them up on the offer and then don’t take the free airfare during a qualifying period you have to factor that in as well.
I hit the link and read it as airfare on 2nd stay not 1st as stated in blog.
I hit the link and read it to say the airfare reimbursement was on 2nd stay not 1st as stated in the blog.
A slight wrinkle in Aria’s offer–similar to ones from years back at the Stratosphere, the airfare for THIS trip will is not covered, you’ll have to pay for the room AND airfare for this trip, but what is covered is the airfare for the NEXT return trip to the Aria after this one, as long as its under $350. So you wind up paying “full” price for this trip (room+transport), and the rooms for the return trip.
I considered the Aria offer. I’d love to stay there once but commiting to stay there twice didn’t appeal to me and these days it’s very hard to get a $350.00 airfare from my home in DC.