Is the megaresort era over? It had a pretty good run, from 1989 until the Great Recession. That’s a solid two decades. There are still one or two megaresort projects still out there, notably Genting Group‘s Resorts World Las Vegas. But they feel like anachronisms. Now the buzzword is “boutique” and small-is-beautiful is the mantra. The most truly boutique-y are The Cromwell, with its 188 rooms, and the 181-room Nobu Tower at Caesars Palace. (Whoever thought we’d equate Caesars Entertainment with intimate settings?)
At the high end of “boutique,” you’ll find 1,100-room THEhotel at Mandalay Bay. It’s scheduled for conversion to the Delano brand this summer. In one important way it’s a purely cosmetic change: Even though Morgans Hotel Group owns the Delano brand, MGM Resorts International will continue to own and manage the property. That point has been made so emphatically and repeatedly that it’s like MGM wants to reassure people that those Morgans screwups won’t have anything to do with the revamped hotel. (Their tenure at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino was a litany of ineptitude.) Howard Stutz takes a tour of the “boutique” properties on the Strip, asking the question of whether smaller is better.
Caesars Interactive‘s acquisition of Playtika is paying off. It is the single largest revenue producer on both the iOS App Store and on Google Play, averaging 21.5% of overall revenue. (International Game Technology‘s DoubleDown Interactive doesn’t even come close.) In other words, Slotomania rules.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission has just chosen to extend the deadline for Region C casino applicants. It will now be a date in September yet to be determined (after the MGC has grappled with Neil Bluhm‘s request for a waiver of the $500 million minimum-investment requirement). This is bad news for Foxwoods Massachusetts, which was hoping to speed across the July 23 threshold, leaving its competitors in the dust. Others, less organized — Bluhm doesn’t even have a site — will be happy with today’s decision. Kudos to the Springfield Republican, by the way, for live-streaming MGC hearings.
