What do you do when occupancy declines? Why, raise the resort fees, of course! The odious levies went up 16% in 2016 and 11% last year, for an average of $34/night. Venetian/Palazzo recently upped its impost to $45 and other companies (we’re looking at you, MGM Resorts International) 
are expected to swiftly follow suit. Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli calls resort fees “a healthy baseline for ADR growth.” We call them a low-down, dirty form of highway robbery. In 2016, 39% of room-rate growth was represented by resort fees and at least 46% last year. It looks to be worse still in 2018. No wonder that AirBnb is catching on in Las Vegas. Why get ripped off by the casino barons when you can stay in a nice home, away from the madness of the Las Vegas Strip?
Although, according to Santarelli, Las Vegas Sands has been the main driver of resort-fee increases, is hasn’t done squat for their average daily rates, which remain flat. Maybe customers are onto Sheldon Adelson‘s clip-joint antics. The analyst expects Bellagio to be the next resort-fee escalator, into the same $45/night level as Venetian — “an appropriate benchmark” in Wall Street parlance. In the absence of Steve Wynn, it is now Sheldon Adelson who sets the path that others follow.
Speaking of MGM, it is buying back another 10 million shares from the late Kirk Kerkorian‘s Tracinda Corp. This will reduce the Kerkorian family’s stake in MGM to less than 5% — and MGM will still have $310 million set aside for share redemption.
* Is the newly enabled, overt presence of racism in our society to blame for the fact that Cameron James Kennedy thought it was a dandy idea to put on blackface in order to rob the New York-New York casino cage? I think so. Either way, Kennedy’s makeup job wasn’t quite good enough to fool an eyewitness, nor was it an especially clever notion for Kennedy — a two-time confessed felon — to cut off his ankle monitoring bracelet, the better to go a-robbin’. Kennedy robbed the cage, hailed a cab and bought a $1,500 gold necklace with his ill-gotten gains ($23,000 in total). Thankfully, if Kennedy’s blackface stunt was an attempt to stoke racial tensions, it was a failure.
Remaining on the topic of things MGM, the new “pool oasis” at Park MGM has been unveiled and it’s quite something. It comprises no fewer 
than three pools, a heated spa pool and 12 cabanas, six of which are off-limits to the hoi polloi. If your bankroll can handle it, you can nibble on watermelon-and-arugula salad while sipping a Bacardi Dragonberry rum-spikedFrosé topped with ripe strawberries. All this decadence is intended to balance “the energy of Vegas with the sophistication of a European retreat, we’ve created an alluring space that offers a variety of experiences for our guests,” quoth Park MGM President Patrick Miller. In keeping with MGM’s mantra of sustainability, the area “incorporates sustainable horticulture, including a selection of climate-appropriate species to mitigate water usage, and palms and fully grown trees salvaged from the existing site.” Well done.
Resort fees…what a joke (local calls, newspaper etc).