{"id":1000,"date":"2009-02-02T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T19:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2009\/2\/2\/Who-are-they-kidding"},"modified":"2009-02-02T11:35:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T19:35:00","slug":"who-are-they-kidding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/who-are-they-kidding\/","title":{"rendered":"Who are they kidding?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mesquite casino oligopolist Randy Black<\/strong> bought himself some TV ad time during the Super Bowl to tout his latest value proposition (starring one Randy Black). His opening gambit: "Everybody's cutting back." Uh no, not if you're Randy Black and just served yourself a nice pay increase while skipping loan payments and sacking the help. But we digress …<\/p>\n

What's Randy's big value message? A midweek rate of $99\/night, which gets you either a free spa treatment or a round of golf. The prospect of a $99 golf game or spa visit had better be pretty strong, because there's certainly no point in hauling ass out to Mesquite for a $99 hotel room, not when you can stay at Planet Hollywood<\/strong> this week for that little — or for even less at The Rio<\/strong> or the Flamingo<\/strong>, to name two of the nicer propositions. (If your standards are more flexible, you can stay on or very, very near the Strip for $20.)<\/p>\n

Columbia Sussex<\/strong> continues to live in a dream world, demanding $249\/night midweek for the Westin Casuarina<\/strong>. Heck, you could stay at Trump International<\/strong> for less than half that amount. Donald Trump<\/strong> and Phil Ruffin<\/strong> really let both the condo market and the budget get away from them on the latter, whose budget quadrupled to a final $1.2 billion. But it's not one of those properties (I'm looking at you, Aladdin<\/strong>) where you walk around and wonder, "Where did the money go?"<\/p>\n

The recent discounting binge<\/strong> on the Strip may have done its job. J.P. Morgan<\/strong> reports "we are finding that casino operators are reducing the number of promotions that are available by and large" and theorizes, "operators have built up a book of occupancy that enables them to not have to rely on a promotional environment." If that's the case and promotional-rate offers continue to dwindle, it's a classic case of gather ye rosebuds while ye may.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mesquite casino oligopolist Randy Black bought himself some TV ad time during the Super Bowl to tout his latest value proposition (starring one Randy Black). His opening gambit: "Everybody's cutting back." Uh no, not if you're Randy Black and just … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,28,42,14,7,53,126,119,9,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}