{"id":21343,"date":"2018-03-14T08:33:20","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T16:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=21343"},"modified":"2018-03-14T08:35:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T16:35:41","slug":"ruthless-resort-fee-robbery-minstrel-show-at-ny-ny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/ruthless-resort-fee-robbery-minstrel-show-at-ny-ny\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruthless resort-fee robbery; Minstrel show at NY-NY"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/strong>\/Palazzo<\/strong> recently upped its impost to $45 and other companies (we’re looking at you, MGM Resorts International<\/strong>) \"\"are expected to swiftly follow suit. Deutsche Bank<\/strong> analyst Carlo Santarelli<\/strong> calls resort fees “a healthy baseline for ADR growth.” We call them a low-down, dirty form of highway robbery. In 2016, 39%<\/em> of room-rate growth was represented by resort fees and at least\u00a046%<\/strong> last year. It looks to be worse still in 2018. No wonder that AirBnb<\/strong> is catching on in Las Vegas<\/strong>. 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<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

Although, according to Santarelli, Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> 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<\/strong>‘s clip-joint antics. The analyst expects Bellagio<\/strong> to be the next resort-fee escalator, into the same $45\/night level as Venetian — “an appropriate benchmark” in Wall Street<\/strong> parlance. In the absence of Steve Wynn<\/strong>, it is now Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> who sets the path that others follow.<\/p>\n

Speaking of MGM, it is buying back another 10 million shares from the late Kirk Kerkorian<\/strong>‘s Tracinda Corp<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n

* Is the newly enabled, overt presence of racism in our society to blame for the fact that Cameron James Kennedy<\/strong> thought it was a dandy idea to put on blackface<\/a> in order to rob the New York-New York<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

Remaining on the topic of things MGM, the new “pool oasis” at Park MGM<\/strong> 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\u00a0Bacardi Dragonberry<\/strong> rum-spiked<\/a>Fros\u00e9 topped with ripe strawberries. All this decadence is intended to balance \u201cthe energy of Vegas with the sophistication of a European retreat, we\u2019ve created an alluring space that offers a variety of experiences for our guests,\u201d quoth Park MGM President Patrick Miller<\/strong>. In keeping with MGM’s mantra of sustainability, the area\u00a0“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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[65,18,4,189,11,234,12,9,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21343"}],"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=21343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21345,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21343\/revisions\/21345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}