{"id":9943,"date":"2012-10-26T16:17:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T00:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=9943"},"modified":"2022-02-27T09:33:52","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T17:33:52","slug":"shadow-puppetry-at-the-sahara-tropihilton-of-lv-melco-goes-southerly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/shadow-puppetry-at-the-sahara-tropihilton-of-lv-melco-goes-southerly\/","title":{"rendered":"Shadow-puppetry at the Sahara; TropiHilton of LV; Melco goes southerly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"“Lightweight” might be a apt term to describe the braintrust forming around the SLS\/Sahara<\/strong> project. So would “miscast.” Reporting to casino novice and owner Sam Nazarian<\/strong>, its president will be J.P. Morgan<\/strong> investment banker Sam Bakhshandehpour<\/strong>. His main qualification for the job? Well, according to Howard Stutz<\/strong>, “[he] worked with Nazarian earlier this year to secure $300 million in financing for renovation of the Sahara into the SLS Las Vegas<\/em>.” Good enough for me! Put that man in charge of a new, un-branded Strip casino!<\/p>\n

Actually, it sounds like they should send Mr. Bakhshandehpour down the street to Caesars Entertainment<\/strong>, which could really<\/em> use help scaring up capital these days. They could call it a swap since …<\/p>\n

Caesars was also the last<\/strong> port of call for ex-vice president of corporate marketing Veronica Smiley<\/strong>. She’ll be CMO at SLS, news that will not bring any smiley faces to my Total Rewards<\/strong>-using friends, who have few kind words for how they are treated nowadays. It’s also a strange fit of exec to property: Nazarian gave away his Sahara database for a mess of Circus Circus<\/strong> pottage, so Smiley’s got nothing even remotely resembling Total Rewards from which to work. She’s at Ground Zero, trying to re-start from scratch, in hot pursuit of twentysomething customers<\/a>. (Methinks the “custom-crafted experience” concept is going to be snurched by Nazarian and used as his central selling point.) If Marriott<\/strong> was a suitable partner for hipster-haven Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas<\/strong>, then Nazarian ought to be thinking more along the lines of …<\/p>\n

\"\"Tropicana Las Vegas<\/strong>, a struggling hotel-casino that managed to grab a branch<\/a> of the Doubletree<\/strong> arbor, at least temporarily arresting its fall. While this makes the Trop a sort of sub-affiliate of Hilton Worldwide<\/strong>, it’s potentially a huge boon, since it ties the Strip dowager into Hilton’s online and telephonic reservation systems. It’s probably never anything that Alex Yemenidjian<\/strong> envisioned originally but it does position the old-but-rejuvenated gal as a bargain-tier alternative to other Hilton-branded properties on the Strip. That’s the real story, I think. While other companies floundered under debt, Hilton has quietly slipped in and snapped up the former Westgate<\/strong> condos at Planet Hollywood<\/strong>, as well as a big chunk of Trump International<\/strong>, and now has baptized the Trop with its brand. Having borne none of Onex Corp<\/strong>.’s $145 million (or more) investment in reinventing the Trop, Hilton is now in a position to share in the return. It’s also well shot of its affiliation with the LVH<\/strong>, the latter having gone to rack and ruin under Colony Capital<\/strong>, and Goldman Sachs<\/strong> seemingly clueless to turn it around.<\/p>\n

\"\"U.S. companies fear to tread<\/strong> in the casino thickets of the Philippines<\/strong> — and, given the lynch-mob treatment recently accorded Steve Wynn<\/strong>, they are wise to do so. Melco Crown Entertainment<\/strong>, however, is not so circumspect. It has formed an “indirect subsidiary,” MCE Leisure, to lease and operate a $1.2 billion Manila<\/strong> casino. While gaming revenues will be siphoned off by a joint-venture partner, PLAI<\/strong>, Melco Crown gets to keep the non<\/em>-gaming profits and is on the hook for any regulatory costs. That’s a lot to ask of Lawrence Ho<\/strong> (left<\/em>) and James Packer<\/strong> in return for $600 million in Melco money. At least they have covered their backsides to the extent of having total operational control through mid-2033. The transaction doesn’t scream “accretive to earnings!”, not to my ears anyway, but I’ll give the Melco lads the benefit of the doubt and presume that they have a bigger Philippine endgame in mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Lightweight” might be a apt term to describe the braintrust forming around the SLS\/Sahara project. So would “miscast.” Reporting to casino novice and owner Sam Nazarian, its president will be J.P. Morgan investment banker Sam Bakhshandehpour. His main qualification for … 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":[48,3,66,28,81,7,22,96,94,53,93,11,6,54,32,9,19,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9943"}],"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=9943"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30785,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9943\/revisions\/30785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}