{"id":438,"date":"2008-04-04T14:47:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-04T22:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/4\/4\/The-Westin-scandal-"},"modified":"2022-10-22T05:22:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-22T13:22:15","slug":"the-westin-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/the-westin-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Westin scandal &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; is growing legs. No, not t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegassun.com\/photos\/2008\/apr\/04\/3700\">hese kind of legs<\/a>. (Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegassun.com\/news\/2008\/apr\/04\/bed-alert\">that too<\/a>.) It&#8217;s also unearthed another strange-but-true story of business as usual at <b>Columbia Sussex<\/b>. That $25\/bedbug bounty at the Trop is unwontedly generous by ColSux standards &#8212; a veritable king&#8217;s ransom &#8212; even if it means the housekeeping staff is going to have do its work during the graveyard shift. (<i>That<\/i>\u00a0would be interesting.)<\/p>\n<p>Also, with anywhere from 12 to 22 rooms to clean, per maid per floor, how much time is the hard-worked housekeeping staff going to have to go Bug-Hunting For Dollars? (The &#8220;bring &#8217;em in alive&#8221; proviso is the best part &#8212; and provides the company with a nifty escape clause.)<\/p>\n<p>Then again &#8230; I wouldn&#8217;t oppose this bounty program being put into practice at all hotels. Could ColSux have actually had an industry-leading idea? <i>Eureka!!!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Speaking of good ideas<\/b>, repositioning the <b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/referenceguide-locationdetail.cfm?LocationID=29\">Golden Gate<\/a><\/b> as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegassun.com\/blogs\/gaming\/2008\/apr\/02\/golden-gate-boutique-property\">a boutique hotel<\/a> would qualify (although the rooms <i>are<\/i> awfully small by contemporary standards). That&#8217;s assuming the Gate has its <b>Culinary Union<\/b> contract in order. How&#8217;s that coming, by the way?<\/p>\n<p><b>Dead man walking<\/b>: The Gibber speaks. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegassun.com\/news\/2008\/apr\/04\/friendly-crowd-goes-frigid-gibbons\">Few listen<\/a>. Mismanaging an ongoing health crisis will do that to you.<\/p>\n<p><b>Just a big coincidence<\/b>. That&#8217;s what <b>Harrah&#8217;s Entertainment<\/b> is saying about the ongoing retrenchment of its overseas projects, now that it&#8217;s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lvrj.com\/business\/17290614.html\"> out of Slovenia<\/a> just weeks after ditching its <b>Baha Mar<\/b> resort. Oh, and don&#8217;t forget the second thoughts Harrah&#8217;s has been having about that <b>London Clubs<\/b> acquisition. Nope, no connection to that massive new debt load. Nothing to see here. Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain.<\/p>\n<p><b>We&#8217;re building project<\/b><b>s<\/b> that will provide as many as 100,000 new jobs, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lvrj.com\/business\/17290629.html\">Jeremy Aguero forecasts<\/a>. But he don&#8217;t have places for them to live. We&#8217;d better get working on that hadn&#8217;t we? Or what will happen?<\/p>\n<p>As the affordable-housing market has shriveled over the last several, condo-addled years,\u00a0I&#8217;ve long thought we&#8217;d reach this point &#8212; where the service workers who will form the backbone of this expansive, sometimes dazzling future can&#8217;t afford to live here or are simply crowded out of the housing market. It&#8217;s ultimately self-defeating.<\/p>\n<p>Every time a developer bulldozes some low-cost housing to build mansions in the sky, who&#8217;s replacing those homes and apartments? And just where are Mr. Big&#8217;s maids, maintenance people, security staff expected to live? Down with the other homeless people who were found squatting at the <b>Klondike<\/b>? Guess so.<\/p>\n<p><b>Big Bang<\/b>. If you can&#8217;t get enough of implosion videos, the <i>Press of Atlantic City<\/i> has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pressofatlanticcity.com\/185\/story\/122703.html\" class=\"broken_link\">added its own<\/a> to its coverage of the demolition of the old Sands garage. Warning: The ultimate collapse is obscured when some gawker steps right in front of the news camera &#8230; although karmic punishment is quickly dispensed, as his bald spot is now showcased for the entire Internet-linked world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; is growing legs. No, not these kind of legs. (Well, that too.) It&#8217;s also unearthed another strange-but-true story of business as usual at Columbia Sussex. That $25\/bedbug bounty at the Trop is unwontedly generous by ColSux standards &#8212; a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/the-westin-scandal\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,15,51,7,22,16,33,9,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438"}],"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=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31782,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/31782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}