No sooner had MGM Mirage brass sprayed Wall Street’s fire during yesterday’s earnings call than comes a new scare: Glenn Hausmann of Hotel Interactive Inc. reported that “A variety of industry suppliers who wished to speak off the record have told Hotel Interactive that the company has been diverting cash from planned renovations at Excalibur and Luxor into the CityCenter project.”
A source at MGM responds that Hausmann’s got it half right, that spending reductions are taking place, but: “The changes in project spending are not as a result of diverting funds to CityCenter.” The source adds that Hausmann has subsequently spoken with MGM and stricken the paragraph in question, which had followed the quote by MGM CFO Dan D’Arrigo.
Luxor is a potentially problematic situation because it’s still in the middle of a big retheming (or, more accurately, a revision). The spending slowdown might explain why the switchover of the Titanic exhibit from the Tropicana is taking so long. And somebody should clue in the Trop that Bodies is over at Luxor now, regardless of what the Trop’s Web site says.
