You've seen the commercials: A convention attendee, name badge still affixed to her jacket, yells, "I can't believe I'm doing this!" at her swarthy young groom at the wedding chapel before rushing back to the trade-show floor. Then's there's a businesswoman-turned-bad girl, flirting with her limo driver. " 'Vegas Stories,' " the city's new, late-night TV campaign, "are really what anyone wants to make of them. There are elements of fun and frivolity, brides and grooms -- here's all different things," says Nancy Murphy, vice president of sales at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA).
Murphy also points to the campaign that's more familiar to meeting planners: "The business brand, 'We Work as Hard as We Play,' makes the case that Las Vegas is a tremendous dest- ination for business, because everything that's fun to do here is available in the evening. There's no diversion from your daytime meeting, because everything's still going to be there after hours."
Both campaigns only scratch the surface, which is something new for a destination that has donned and shed images for over 50 years -- from hipsters' haven to family playground to the capital of mega-fantasy resorts. The truth is that Vegas is no longer a one-note town -- hasn't been for a while. It is a diverse, complex city, with something for everybody. "People always try to generalize about Las Vegas," observes Patti Shock, catering operations and sales professor at William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "But it's too big to get your arms around. Las Vegas is just all things to all people. You can find something for adults, children, and groups. Everything is here!"
Here are some of the biggest trends that are shaping Vegas right now.
High-Class Vegas
"Even though Las Vegas is filled with gamblers and runs on the gaming dollar," says Murphy, "it's not the main reason people come here anymore." Murphy cites a recent survey by the LVCVA indicating that the latest draw is entertainment. Having been born and raised in Las Vegas, Murphy personally cites the rise of restaurants with celebrity chefs as a significant change: "Years ago, the properties had a buffet, a coffeehouse, a Chinese restaurant, and a steakhouse. Today, you'll find the finest chefs in the world. The celebrity movement is incredible -- with everyone from Wolfgang Puck to Emeril Lagasse, our dining is spectacular."
Fine dining is part of the new luxury market, which emerged in 1999 with the opening of the Four Seasons Las Vegas, and has since hit full stride. There are now three Five Diamond properties: the Four Seasons (which achieved the distinction eight months after opening), the Bellagio, and the Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas in nearby Henderson; and new high-end residences for MGM Grand and a new Conrad Hotel are in the offing. But with the exception of the Bellagio, gaming at these properties is not significant. "We don't have a casino," says Kathy Van Vechten, director of marketing, Four Seasons. The Four Seasons property resides in a tower of the Mandalay Bay resort, but with a separate entrance. "Our elevators are separate from their elevators, but if you get off our elevator at C (for 'casino') and go through a security door using your key, you're in the lobby in Mandalay Bay. So our guests have immediate access to the gaming. For us it's the best of both worlds."
The Bellagio, which opened in 1998, was foremost in expanding entertainment beyond the show room and lounge. On display at the Lake Como-themed property was then-owner Steve Wynn's personal art collection, launching a new market for culture, including -- for a while, anyway -- not one but two Guggenheim museums. "Most people don't realize that there were two Guggenheim museums," says Elizabeth Herridge, managing director of the Guggenheim Hermitage. The Guggenheim Las Vegas, which exhibited 'The Art of the Motorcycle,' closed in January 2003, but her Guggenheim, which opened in October 2001, she explains, is an ongoing partnership between the Guggenheim Foundation and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. "The Guggenheim Hermitage plays a big role in bringing world-class art to Vegas. We also have a number of colleagues who are doing interesting things, both profit and nonprofit. There are several ways of getting the same result." The Guggenheim takes its role very seriously. "We get a visitor volume of about a quarter of a million a year, but we're not just a fifteen-dollar attraction. We're here because we live in this market and want to be a community partner."
Low-down Vegas
"They said that Las Vegas was turning into a child-friendly destination," remarks Shock, "but only a few hotels went that direction -- the rest stayed adult themed." Murphy agrees: "Las Vegas has always been an adult destination. You have to be twenty-one to be in our casinos."
Still, Tina Greene, president of Los Angeles-based Security Travel, was able to play a long shot and win. Greene has planned DefCon (affectionately known as the "computer hackers' conference") for the past five years. When she started, attendance consisted of 350 under-21-year-olds (the kind who breach computer firewalls for kicks) meeting on a weekend. "Vegas traditionally doesn't like group business on the weekend." she says. Greene's solution was to monopolize Alexis Park Resort and Spa, then the largest nongaming hotel in Las Vegas. The show had to stay in Vegas because it had proven to be a fertile recruiting resource for a show Greene also plans, the Black Hat security conference, which immediately followed the DefCon. "It was probably one of the more challenging site selection activities of my career," says Greene, who solved it by locking in dates and properties for both shows. "I changed the dates so that Black Hat always met the last week in July at Caesars, with DefCon following on the last weekend in July at Alexis Park. Stability expanded the show from 350 to 5,000 in attendance. "It's now one of the most profitable nongaming receivables in the city, I've been told," says Greene, who now finds other properties courting what was once considered the "meeting from hell."
Business Vegas
The economy of Las Vegas has shifted from gaming to meetings and conventions. A survey by the LVCVA shows a year-to-date, 10-percent increase in meetings; and the Las Vegas Convention Center, hosting a record of 20 meetings in March, reported a nongaming impact of $265 million—for the month. "In the meetings arena," says Murphy, "they come here to have a great meeting, with a lot of incentives and fun -- the shows, dining, et cetera -- and wonderful weather. Gaming is ancillary to that."
There's currently 9,000,000 square feet of convention and meeting space in the city, most of it -- with the exception of the Las Vegas Convention Center -- distributed among the city's casino hotel properties. Now, upscale hotel properties without casinos are entering the market. "Vegas just amazes us," says David Scypinski, senior vice president, industry relations, Starwood Hotels and Resorts. "Every time a new property opens, it actually spikes occupancy instead of pushing it down." Starwood opened the 825-room Westin Casuarina last November and purchased the Aladdin last year (rebranded as a Sheraton and operated in partnership with the Hard Rock). The Westin does not have a casino, since "there have been a lot of conversations with customers who would like to be in both the group and the transient markets, about not being able to stay in properties with casinos because of company regulations and prohibitions. This is an opportunity to bring in a property that does not have a casino in order to attract another market segment."
In early 2005, the 548-room, $100-million Renaissance Las Vegas -- the most expensive nongaming property in Vegas -- will open adjoining the Las Vegas Convention Center. According to Mike Beardsley, senior vice president of sales, for Marriott North America, "We've found that a lot of people want to come to Vegas, but don't want to stay in the big hotels, and don't want to stay on the Strip -- but close to the Strip. They don't [feel they] have to be at a three-thousand-room hotel. And there is a market served by that." Lewis W. Shaw II, chairman and CEO of the Dallas-based Jackson-Shaw Company that is developing the property, agrees. "It's not necessary for us to have a gaming element there. The company coming to Las Vegas to do business wants somebody there early on that convention floor, and is paying all that money for a hundred rooms, so it wants them until the last minute, off the casino floor."
The Next Vegas
"If you go beyond the Strip," says Beardsley, "to the JW Marriott or the Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas, people are going there because it's a resort, just like they would go to Scottsdale, Palm Springs, or Florida." Again, gaming is incidental; Clark Albright, general manager at the JW Marriott Las Vegas (located in the golf community of Summerlin) quips, "You can stand at one end of our casino and see the door on the other end." As a resort, the JW competes not with the Strip, but with Scottsdale and Palm Springs. "We can offer multiple golf facilities at up to five courses to one group. If they want to play two or three courses in three consecutive days, they're not locked in to the course that the resort owns."
For Jennie Jacobson, president of Los Angeles-based Unique Events, Inc., the new resorts outside Las Vegas have made all the difference. "This year has been the comeback of Las Vegas for many of my meetings and incentive programs," she says. "My clients are a diverse group made up of Fortune 500 companies, and many of these had opted not to come to Las Vegas for several years because they required luxury resort properties and the attention of their attendees. It was perceived that the Strip was too distracting and not conducive to achieving business goals." But now, she adds, "I feel comfortable recommending Las Vegas as an option because The Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas is a great alternative. Currently I'm planning an event for a client staying on the Strip, who wanted a unique off-site option for his attendees. So, we are producing an Italian Renaissance festival in the Intrawest-developed 'MonteLago Village' adjacent to and catered by The Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas. This is another creative solution for groups that host their meetings on the Strip due to size, availability, and so on, but who want to have an off-site function that can provide attendees with a completely different experience of being in Las Vegas."
Says Doug Brooks, Ritz-Carlton general manager, "The Ritz-Carlton had long been interested in Las Vegas. Our goal was to deliver a true resort experience, expanding upon what is offered at desert destinations in other states. Our waterside location at Lake Las Vegas provides on-site golf, lake and beach sports, spectacular scenery, outdoor recreation, spa, shopping, and extensive function space to meeting attendees, while also offering the convenient amenities of the Las Vegas Strip. I know of no other place that delivers such a vibrant and varied mix."
Endorsements like these are music to the ears of Lake Las Vegas' developer, Ron Boedekker. "I've been involved in this project for eighteen years," he says pointing to the 320-acre lake his company created in the middle of the desert. "The idea was to introduce something in the market that was never expected to be in southern Nevada." Explaining the difference between Lake Las Vegas and the Strip, Boedekker says, "What you see here is something you're going to see happening all over the state. Emphasis here is not gaming. Gaming is another form of entertainment."
In the beginning, Boedekker took the Lake Las Vegas concept to Steve Wynn, who wanted to put in a Strip-style resort along the south shore of the lake. Instead, Boedekker tried to sell Wynn on the type of resort that he had developed in Arizona. Says Boedekker, "The whole Strip turned against this. And the reason we exist the way we do today, is because none of them would come out and endorse and embrace this concept. Instead came the Hyatt and the Ritz and the others who said, 'We've always wanted to be in this market, but we don't feel good about being [on the Strip]. We need to be outside of town.' And so the very thing that we were criticized for," concludes Boedekker, "that we were eighteen miles outside of town, became our amenity."
Wynn's Vegas
Steve Wynn's latest resort, the $2.4 billion Wynn Las Vegas, will open next year. Having changed Las Vegas forever with his megaresorts Mirage and Bellagio, will Wynn do it again with this property?
Maybe. In the meantime, Wynn's high-profile image is still a byword among his peers. "In my next life," jokes fellow developer Shaw, "maybe I'll come back as Steve Wynn."