To state the obvious, Las Vegas sets the standard by which all other gaming destinations are measured. Competitors wishing to tout the quality of their amenities frequently describe their gaming, shows, and concert offerings as "Las Vegas-style."
And yet, Vegas stands alone. No one can see the "neon constellation" of the Strip without recognizing it; no one can cross its casino floors the size of Texas, past legions of one-armed bandits, without acknowledging their fearsome pull. And, let's face it, if anyone can walk its combined exhibit and meeting space—more than nine million square feet, much of it in three separate convention centers—in a single day, well, that person should get a medal and an oxygen tank.
Even more surprising, for a city that reinvents itself every five minutes, Las Vegas is old. Next month, Las Vegas turns 100, an event for which the city's been gearing up for months. "Las Vegas is like no other city in the world," said Mayor Oscar Goodman at November's announcement of the Las Vegas Centennial celebration, which he chairs. "In just 100 years, Las Vegas has become a pop culture icon with a history so colorful and rich that it sets us apart from any city, anywhere."
Pride of Place
The mayor's sentiments are echoed by Vegas native Rossi Ralenkotter: "Las Vegas is not only my hometown, it's the most exciting city in the world." Ralenkotter, who last year became president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (LVCVA), has been with the LVCVA for more than 32 years, and has seen the desert town evolve from a primarily drive-to destination to an international hot spot.
And of the nearly 37 million visitors to arrive in Las Vegas last year, more than 15 percent, 5.7 million, were convention attendees. In spite of fewer conventions held (an 8.9 percent decrease over 2003), convention attendance was up by 1.2 percent, with the economic impact increased by 4.8 percent. Notes Ralenkotter: "When you're driving millions of visitors a year, you need to look at all the market segments that make up the travel industry, and for us, we need to be aggressive in each one of those." Explaining the CVA's meetings strategy, Ralenkotter says, "We look at windows of selling opportunity that we have with our building, and we will target trade shows that meet in those time frames, where we're attempting to fill in where we have available space. On the meetings side, one of the strengths of Las Vegas and the fact that we have over nine million square feet of space to offer to all different types of meetings is that we can accommodate any size meeting group."
A Meetings Mainstay
"Non-gaming revenues bringing in more than gaming revenues—that's been happening in the city for a few years now," says Chrisann Flatt, who joined Steve Wynn's organization in 1986. Now vice president of hotel sales and marketing for Wynn Las Vegas, she adds, "Having been on the non-casino side throughout my career, it's been a lot of fun going through that conversion process."
A typical complaint, according to Patti Shock, catering operations and sales professor at William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is that it is extremely difficult to get meetings into town over weekends. "The casinos are not going to give up the weekend gamblers," she says. However, due to the increased importance of the convention market, first-class room inventory without attached gaming has expanded throughout the city, including the 548-room Renaissance next to the Las Vegas Convention Center, which opened in November and can function as a headquarters hotel.
And as the hospitality, tourism, and gaming offerings expand to serve the growing market, "You see a lot more seasoned professionals arrive who have come from the major hotel chains, with traditional experience in running hotels and convention centers," says Terry Jicinsky, senior vice president of marketing for the CVA. "They bring a sense of sophistication to their approach of working with meeting planners; they bring more customer service experience and broaden the services that they offer. Instead of the standard meeting room, there's a lot of convention center facilities and conference center facilities throughout Las Vegas that have very high-end audio and video capabilities, and the level of sophistication clearly has evolved over the last decade."
The difference is not lost on planners. "I remember my very first experience in Vegas, 10 years ago," says Michele Yebba, meeting planning specialist at Bose Corporation, in Framingham, MA. "I remember leaving thinking, 'I hope I never have to go back to Vegas.' I just didn't like the city overall. I'm not a gambler, so it just didn't seem like it had anything to offer me." Now, she says, "I actually look forward to going. I've never been to Vegas on a vacation, and now I think that I might actually enjoy it. There is so much to offer." Yebba cites restaurants as one of the key "wow" factors: "The choices of restaurants are amazing. They run in all price and quality ranges, so we can impress our customers, and meet our per diems, too."
Even hometown planners can tell the difference: Debbie Baker, an account executive for TWI Extras, the housing and events division for the Vegas-based TWI Group Inc., says, "I have been here 14 years. The hotels are much more planner-friendly, instead of relying mostly on the tourists for their business."
A Great Place to Live, Seriously
"I moved here in January of 1988," remembers Shock. "The Mirage opened in November of 1989, and that started the last great change. Following that, other companies opened new hotels, and Steve Wynn built more. Celebrity chefs came in and opened great restaurants. Caesars built the Forum Shops, starting the shopping boom—and it is still the highest-grossing retail space in the country based on sales per square foot. The Hard Rock started bringing in the 'cool' crowd of celebrities from entertainment and sports. The Sands Expo Center created an alternative or complement to the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the Mandalay Bay Convention Center did the same. So quite a number of conventions can be going on at the same time."
In fact, there are 1.7 million people in the Las Vegas area, with more on the way. Jicinsky says that the research department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, cites that an average of 4,000 people move to Clark County each month. Some of these are in the condo market, which, according to Jicinsky, comprises "two very distinct markets. One is the traditional time-share market, which has expanded over the past decade to almost 1,000 units. MGM is building four towers of traditional time-share."
But residential condos, while a standard outgrowth of the luxury property phenomenon elsewhere, are new to the Vegas mix. "Between the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton, and the opening of the Conrad, we really have more offerings for the high-end meetings market," claims Jicinsky. (In addition to these is the recently opened THEhotel, the 1,120-suite property at the Mandalay Bay complex with 24 suites per floor, and a 5,000-square-foot "business suite" available on three floors.) The residential condos, says Jicinsky, "are either used for full-time residents or as second homes for people who visit Las Vegas a lot, or who think that it will be a good opportunity to visit the city and a sound real estate investment."
What's it like to live in Las Vegas? Shock says, "Away from the Strip, it is a very normal town. The tourist area is a place you go with your out-of-town guests. I compare living here with living in Orlando: Disney World is there, but unless you work for Disney, it isn't part of your daily life." But on the Strip, it's becoming another scene entirely: "As the city matures, the entertainment matures; it changes the quality of life for those of us who live here," says Jicinsky. "Today, you have a half a dozen five-star restaurants, an entertainment scene from ultra-lounges to nightclubs to tons of shows." These are the types of amenities for which Manhattan is famous, but Las Vegas, he adds, "is much cheaper than living in Manhattan."
The More Things Change . . .
The next "Big Things" to change the future of Las Vegas are mergermania and Wynn Las Vegas. The merger requests that were filed last year between MGM MIRAGE and Mandalay Bay, and between Harrah's and Caesars, respectively, are moving forward. At presstime, the MGM MIRAGE-Mandalay Bay merger had received approval from the Nevada Gaming Commission (pending regulatory requirements to be met in Illinois and Michigan). Says Alan Feldman, senior VP, public affairs, MGM MIRAGE, "For groups, this is really terrific news. As soon as the merger goes through, we'll be able to offer a one-stop shop across the board. It will be a terrific boon to consumers and meeting groups when, in one move, we can offer access, Vegas-wide, to an incredible array of restaurants, hotels, meeting spaces, and shows." (Also, at presstime, Robert Stewart, senior VP of corporate communications for Caesars Entertainment, affirmed that the Harrah's and Caesars merger is "expected to close in May.")
The second Big Thing is this month's opening of Wynn Las Vegas, the $2.7- billion resort that's been five years in the making. Many people in Vegas today arrived there at the dawn of the late 80s. Vegas' boom times are commonly attributed to the creation and debut of The Mirage in 1989, and the city's cultural evolution to the opening of the Bellagio in 1999. Jicinsky, who came to Vegas in 1988, says that around the time he arrived, "There was a considerable growth in construction jobs to build all the casino hotels that resulted in more people moving here and building homes. So there was a boom in home construction about the same time period. And it hasn't stopped since." Says Flatt: "Mr. Wynn was one of the first to recognize that people really want to come here to shop and to dine and to be entertained. When we built the properties, he integrated the whole experience under one roof and really brought some fabulous shopping and some great chefs and has really taken everything to a whole new level." With this third megaresort, eyes are again on the primary architect of Vegas' future to show them the way.
. . . The More They Stay the Same
As Las Vegas enters its second century with a diversified economy and non-gaming revenues on the rise, most agree that gaming will remain at its core.
"There's always a great emphasis on gaming," says Flatt. "That's where Las Vegas got its start and that's what will continually carry Las Vegas moving forward forever. The gaming aspect of it is what allows us to spend the kind of money we spend on these resorts and all of the great things that we do here in the city." Jicinsky agrees: "When you consider the amount of money invested by the entrepreneurs who have built these casinos, hotels, and meeting facilities, it's just a dollar amount of investment that is not going to be to duplicated in any other city, and the synergy of that all being built on the Las Vegas Strip along a five-mile corridor creates a unique product and a unique environment that will always be our competitive advantage. And it will always be successful to the point that other entrepreneurs are going to want to get their share of the new stuff and get the old stuff up to date, and remodeled and refurbished. I fully expect that in the foreseeable future, that development will continue to be the lion's share of what Las Vegas is all about."
Sidebars
On Deck: Wynn Las Vegas
Steve Wynn once said, "Anybody who seeks to create a truly unique destination resort has to love the process. Because if all you cared about was cash flow, you'd never, ever spend five years creating one." This month, as the curtain rises on the five-years-in-the-making Wynn Las Vegas, Successful Meetings spoke with Chrisann Flatt, vice president of hotel sales and marketing for Wynn Las Vegas (upper left).
Successful Meetings: What's the new property like?
Chrisann Flatt: What we wanted to do was to bring the outdoors in. The mountain is certainly the biggest "wow" factor. It allows us to block out the outside and create that whole intimate atmosphere. With 2,700 rooms, the building is smaller than what we've done in the past. The tower has 47 rooms per floor and there are only 14 rooms between elevators. So it's very close once you step off the elevator to get to your room. The walks are much shorter. The distance from the front desk to the guest elevator is about half what we've done in the past. The resort is still quite large; we still have 17 restaurants, 30 retail outlets, and a golf course.
SM: What kinds of offerings do you have for groups?
Flatt: There's about 200,000 square feet of meeting space. The biggest ballroom is 50,000 square feet; the next one is 25,000 square feet. And every meeting room has a beautiful raised patio that looks out over the pool deck or the golf course, or our beautiful garden areas with fountains. A promenade that's between the two ballrooms is all glass and looks out over the pool and the terraced patio steps down toward the pool deck.
On the F&B side, our executive chef, Marc Poidevin, is putting together an incredible program: a la carte dining options so that courses can be chosen individually, seasonal tasting menus, and an hors d'oeuvres kitchen. The staff is putting together a great program with designer china, crystal, and silver. And our servers are going to be wearing Giorgio Armani!
SM: What groups have booked, so far?
Flatt: A lot of the high-end corporate and incentive business: financial, insurance, technology, automotive—it's all coming. And of course, some associations. We're got groups on the books from 25 rooms up to 1,400 rooms. We can book half the property for a single meeting.
A Place You Can Go: Downtown
It's a bit of a secret, but "Downtown" is actually all there is to the "real" Las Vegas. "A lot of people don't know this," says Terry Jicinsky, senior vice president of marketing for the LVCVA, "but the Strip is actually part of unincorporated Clark County. That portion of the county has never been annexed into the city jurisdiction of Las Vegas, so the county is really the metropolitan area, what we call and know as Las Vegas."
On December 31, the city kicked off centennial celebrations with the "America's Party" spectacular, which culminated with unprecedented fireworks (and we're talking Vegas, here). Near the actual anniversary, May 15, there will be a Helldorado Days Western Village set up near the Main Street Station Casino, as well as the presentation of a 130,000-pound birthday cake (beating a 1989 Guinness Book world record).
All this activity in downtown should bring attention to the area, which has lagged behind the Strip in recognition and revenues for some time. All may change, however, when entrepreneur-restaurateur Tilman Fertitta takes the helm at the Golden Nugget, downtown's largest hotel casino. Fertitta's corporation, Landry's Restaurants, is paying $295 million. Landry's serves as a corporate umbrella for a host of mid-range restaurants, including Landry's, Joe's Crab Shack, and the Spaghetti Warehouse; its upscale brands include the Grotto and Pesce. With these venues, Fertitta could be said to have more than passing experience with creating fantasies; and with Landry's acquisition of the former Ocean Journey Aquarium in 2003 in Denver, CO, he's even got two Sumatran tigers that had been part of the aquarium's Asia exhibit. Watch out, downtown.