{"id":4426,"date":"2010-08-23T16:52:35","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T00:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=4426"},"modified":"2010-08-23T16:52:35","modified_gmt":"2010-08-24T00:52:35","slug":"strip-rates-bottom-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/strip-rates-bottom-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Strip rates bottom out"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was good news for hoteliers on the Las Vegas Strip<\/strong> today. Room rates for the second quarter and the first half of the third quarter average out to a 0% increase\/decline from last year, following a -4% comparison in 1Q10. Unless one singles out Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong>, the Big Four among Strip operators (Harrah’s, Wynn Resorts<\/strong>, MGM Resorts International<\/strong> and Las Vegas Sands<\/strong>) aren’t seeing the kind of worrisome, double-digit ADR plunges in 2010 that they experienced last year.<\/p>\n

\"\"Though it’s supposedly not driving up room rates, convention business has become a much bigger part of Wynn’s business model, up to 17.5% of overall room sales from 12% last year. Sands is around 25%, by comparison, and says it expects to be up to a 30\/70 convention\/other room-occupancy ratio next year. According to a J.P. Morgan<\/strong> investor dispatch, Sands execs “noted that forward bookings for 2H10 and 2011 are increasing and pricing trends appear to be stronger, especially on weekends<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Despite fears of cannibalization by City Center<\/strong>, MGM’s Mandalay Bay<\/strong> reported its second-best-ever month for convention bookings last June. Even with strong increases in the convention sector per se<\/em>, it still remains a relatively small component of MGM’s Strip business model. In terms of ADR improvement, Wynn leads the pack, up nearly 15% from last year. Sands is also doing better than average, while MGM can’t seem to move the needle, being stuck at ‘slightly down from last year’ status. A distant laggard in the first two quarters, Harrah’s is only but a couple of percentage points off last year’s 3Q pace. It would be a gross oversimplification to treat such an improvement as purely the result of banning “resort fees,” but it’s clearly doing business no harm.<\/p>\n

Throttle a cabbie, get a gaming license<\/strong>. Despite having inflicted bodily harm upon a Las Vegas cabbie and had another (unspecified) scrape with the law in Reno<\/strong>, the Nevada Gaming Commission<\/strong> decided that John H. Pohorsky<\/strong> is just the kind of guy it wants in the casino industry<\/a>. Never mind that Pohorsky couldn’t keep his alibi for the Reno incident straight, nor that he’s merely promised to join Alcoholics Anonymous<\/strong> (although he plans to continue drinking), commissioners voted him through, 3-2. Even Commissioner John Moran<\/strong>, who didn’t believe what Pohorsky was saying, voted to approve<\/em> the license.<\/p>\n

Remember when Gary Loveman<\/strong> pitched a fit about his Nevada gaming-license investigation, calling it the worst experience of his life? Why does as respectable a figure as Loveman have regulators crawling up his sphincter if they’re going to give mulligans to the Pohorskys of this world?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was good news for hoteliers on the Las Vegas Strip today. Room rates for the second quarter and the first half of the third quarter average out to a 0% increase\/decline from last year, following a -4% comparison in … 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":[14,7,11,25,79,12,32,9,19,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4426"}],"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=4426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4428,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4426\/revisions\/4428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}