{"id":5408,"date":"2010-12-21T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T23:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=5408"},"modified":"2019-12-09T16:31:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T00:31:02","slug":"morning-in-vegas-karma-2-penn-natl-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/morning-in-vegas-karma-2-penn-natl-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning in Vegas? Karma 2, Penn Nat’l 0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Having been burned by a few too many “false positives” in terms of economic recovery, S&G<\/em> is loath to get anyone’s hopes up. (And some remain skeptical<\/a>.) However, another room-rate survey from J.P. Morgan<\/strong> provides license for optimism. As you know, convention traffic in the first three months of next year is going to be a huge improvement on 2010. That’s being reflected in a 12% rise in ADRs. Even Wynncore<\/strong>, which had the least ground to make up, is looking at 10% improvement. Perhaps the most significant augury, though, is a 15% aggregate increase for the many Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> properties, driven by strong midweek prices. Since the middle and lower tiers of the Strip hotel market have been most resistant to price improvement, how the ex-Harrah’s cluster of hotels performs is a key metric to watch.<\/p>\n

There’s good news for Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas <\/strong>(above<\/em>), too. Its 1Q11 room rates, while in no danger of toppling Bellagio<\/strong>, are running ahead of Aria<\/strong>‘s: $203 vs. $195 midweek and $295 vs. $282 on weekends. At least as far as the party crowd is concerned, borderline-campy Cosmo is going to have it all over Aria.<\/p>\n

Steve Wynn’s pick<\/strong> for the next President of these United States<\/strong> is momentarily busy extricating his foot from his mouth<\/a>. Even so, Haley Barbour<\/strong>‘s a saint compared to his cretinous older brother Jeppie Barbour<\/strong>, a real piece of work<\/a>. Since Wynn likes to wax political during his analyst calls, I wonder if anyone’s going to raise l’affaire Yazoo<\/em> at his next one.<\/p>\n

More Penn skulduggery<\/strong>. When not trying to bigfoot elections, Penn National Gaming<\/strong> occasionally runs casinos. Its Columbus<\/strong>, Ohio<\/strong>, project is now off the grid — literally. The mayor and city council have disconnected Penn’s Columbus site from the sewer system<\/a> until and unless the land is annexed to the city. A Penn spokesman wailed, “At some point, when you’re dealing with bullies, you have to say, ‘Enough is enough<\/em>.'”<\/p>\n

However, Penn had spent time it was supposed to be using to complete the annexation trying to shake down Columbus for at least $8 million in tax breaks. Seems it wants the benefits (like sewage service) of being in the city but the lower tax rates that come with being unincorporated. Penn also started drilling its own wells, prompting Columbus leaders to say, in effect, “So there!<\/em>” Two can play this game.<\/p>\n

Speaking of bullying<\/strong>, Penn has been trying to quash a casino project in Maine<\/strong>‘s Oxford County<\/strong>. That meddlesome move ended last week when a recount of the casino vote was called off. Who says nice guys finish last?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having been burned by a few too many “false positives” in terms of economic recovery, S&G is loath to get anyone’s hopes up. (And some remain skeptical.) However, another room-rate survey from J.P. Morgan provides license for optimism. As you … 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":[66,14,26,7,71,69,32,31,9,19,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5408"}],"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=5408"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25569,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5408\/revisions\/25569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}