Las Vegas-style gaming is steering its way through the South like never before.
Tribal casinos in Florida are replacing electronic bingo-type machines with Las Vegas-type slots. Racinos (racetrack casinos) in West Virginia have added table games; those in Florida are less than two years old, and those in Oklahoma are less than three. And late to join the game, Oklahoma’s tribes are finally rolling out impressive new casino resorts.
Eager for additional tax-revenue sources, states have fueled this gambling expansion through legislation enacted in recent years.
Meanwhile, jaw-dropping projects in the well-established casino states of Mississippi and Louisiana are also adding to the inventory of meeting and entertainment options.
In addition, new riverboat facilities are now popping up in smaller communities on the Mississippi between Tunica and Baton Rouge that last saw casino growth in the 1990s.
With the resurgence of storm-disrupted areas, winners and losers have appeared as normal patterns return. And attention is now focused on the economy and softening markets that began to surface in statistics this spring.
Hurricane Katrina struck three years ago. Attesting to its recovery from devastation, last year the Mississippi Gulf Coast saw its best gaming year ever. New Orleans also saw its casino revenue continue to grow as its strides toward recapturing visitor numbers.
Mississippi
With eight of the 11 casinos along the 26-mile Gulf Coast, Biloxi’s gaming palaces for the first time in 2007 topped $1 billion in revenues in 2007. The previous high for the South’s second largest commercial casino market was $911 million in pre-Katrina 2004.
“It’s remarkable, the progress that’s been made. The spirit of the people here is incredible. There is still a lot to be done, but the coast is coming back,’’ says Richard Forester, the new executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast CVB.
Forester says that the beach destination is still about 5,000 hotel rooms short of its pre-Katrina count, but more rooms and meeting space are coming on line.
He’s encouraged, he explains, by casino developers’ understanding for the need for meeting space and more non-gaming attractions, and he would like to see a headquarters hotel built for the Mississippi Coast Coliseum & Convention Center.
The Biloxi Convention Center is undergoing an expansion, scheduled to open in October 2009, which will increase its 180,000 square feet of available space to 351,000 square feet. Meanwhile, the arena and convention facility remain open while the existing center space undergoes renovation.
Legislation allowing land-based casinos within 800 feet of the shore attracted a bunch of new casino proposals.
The first to get underway, and planned for a 2010 opening, is the $704 million, 798-room Harrah’s Margaritaville Casino & Resort. Adjacent to the company’s 500-room Grand Biloxi Casino Hotel & Spa and using the former Casino Magic site, it will include 66,000 square feet of meeting space.
The coast now has 12,400 hotel rooms; pre-Katrina it had 17,000-plus.
Most of the 12 original riverboat casinos had hotels and meeting and event space. All but three had returned by the end of 2006. Two destroyed were not rebuilt—the President and Casino Magic.
The last to open, Biloxi’s Treasure Bay Casino, returned in July last year complete with a new casino, a 249-room hotel, and 3,600 square feet of meeting space.
Readying to open when Katrina struck, the new Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, debuted in Biloxi in July last year, adding 318 guest rooms, a 1,445-slot casino, a spa, five restaurants, and a 1,400-seat entertainment venue to the coast’s inventory.
The largest hotel meeting facilities are at the 1,740-room Beau Rivage Resort & Casino with 50,000 square feet of meeting space, which underwent a $750 million renovation, and the 1,088-room IP Hotel & Casino, which has 18,000 square feet of meeting space.
The IP and Isle of Capri Casino are both planning $100 million-plus expansions. Like many casinos, the Isle moved its gaming into the hotel’s meeting space after Katrina damaged its riverboat.
Other Biloxi casinos are the 236-room Palace Casino Resort and Boomtown Biloxi. Others on the coast are the 291-room Hollywood Casino Bay St. Louis, Gulfport’s 562-room Island View Casino Resort and the Silver Slipper in Lakeshore.
Half a dozen new condo hotels—three on Biloxi’s Beach Boulevard and three along Gulfport’s Beach Drive—have added to the room count.
Also, Courtyard by Marriott Gulfport opened in May with 153 rooms and 6,300 square feet of meeting space following a three-year, $9.6 million renovation. The conversion of the former Gulfport Beachfront Hotel was originally scheduled to begin Aug. 28, the day before Katrina struck.
Late last year, Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport completed a $50 million expansion and a new parking garage is under construction. The airport now has more flights than pre-Katrina, and U.S. Airways began service from Charlotte in May with three flights a day.
Tunica, the South’s largest casino market and the country’s sixth largest, had gaming revenues of $1.243 million last year, down from $1.252 million in 2006 when it spiked with a 9 percent increase while the Gulf Coast recovered.
“We did a really good job of keeping the business in the state. Meetings groups came here for the first time. They liked what they saw and are including us in their rotations and are coming back,” says Anne Coggins, Tunica CVB sales manager.
Six of its nine riverboat casinos have hotels and substantial meeting space.
Of the casinos, the 1,076-room Sam’s Town boasts the most meeting and function space with 50,000 square feet, followed by the 1,356-room Harrah’s, and the 1,160-room Gold Strike Casino Resort, each with 30,000 square feet. The 494-room Hollywood Casino has 14,000 square feet, the 200-room Resorts Tunica, 13,464 square feet and the 507-room Fitz Casino & Hotel, 9,650 square feet.
Harrah’s Casino Tunica was the Grand Casino Resort until a May grand opening and rebranding following a $45 million renovation. New dining offerings include the 560-seat Paula Deen’s Buffet (named for the Food Network celebrity chef), a new poker room and newly renovated guest rooms.
“By the end of the year, more than half of our 6,300 hotel rooms will be new,” says Coggins, explaining that the Goldstrike, Sam’s Town and the Fitz are in the midst of renovation projects.
Along the Mississippi River southeast of Tunica the communities of Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez have riverboat casinos.
Vicksburg has four, each with a hotel—Diamond Jack’s, Ameristar, Horizon, and Rainbow. Horizon, next to downtown’s Vicksburg Convention Center, has more than 50,000 square feet of function space.
In May the Ameristar unveiled a $100 million expansion featuring more than 500 gaming positions, a poker room and a 1,000-space parking garage. Opening this summer are a new club lounge and two new restaurants.
A fifth gaming riverboat—the Riverwalk Casino Hotel—is slated to open in November. Vicksburg’s first new casino since 1994 will feature 80 guest rooms, 800 slots and 20 table games, restaurants, and a meeting/events center.
With one riverboat casino, the 141-room Isle of Capri, Natchez will get a second with the expected fourth-quarter opening of the $80 million Grand Soleil Casino Resort. It will include a 124-room hotel (a remodeled former Ramada Inn), an 850-slot casino and meeting rooms.
Greenville has two riverboat casinos—Bayou Caddy’s Jubilee and Lighthouse Point—and one new land-based casino.
Last November, Harlow’s Casino Resort opened near the river. With an art deco theme, it features a 105-room hotel, a 33,000 square foot casino, a 2,500-seat entertainment center, and restaurants.
Mississippi’s lone tribal operation is the Pearl River Resort operated by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians in Choctaw near Philadelphia,
The resort boasts two casino hotels with more than 1,000 rooms, 40,000 square feet of meeting space, 16 restaurants, the 36-hole Dancing Rabbit Golf Club, a spa, water theme park, and 5,000 slot machines and 100 table games.
Early this year, the tribe held the grand opening of a 140-room Hilton Garden Inn, adjacent to the golf club with 2,500 square feet of meeting space, including a boardroom.
Louisiana
Louisiana’s 13 commercial riverboat casinos and one land-based facility had revenues of $2.5 million in 2007, flat with 2006. In addition, the Pelican State has four racinos and three tribal casinos.
Two hours from metro Houston on I-10, Lake Charles delivers two riverboat casino resorts and one racino, making it the South’s fifth largest commercial casino market with revenues of $640 million last year, down from $656 million in 2006.
An expansion at Pinnacle Entertainment’s three-year-old L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort has produced the region’s largest resort. Early this year, it unveiled a $67 million, 252-room addition, bringing total rooms to 995, and a dozen upscale retail outlets.
With a Texas Hill country theme, the property has 26,000 square feet of meeting space, including a 14,175-square-foot ballroom, a casino, spa, and a Tom Fazio-designed 18-hole golf course.
Kerry Andersen, the resort’s director of community and public relations, says group sales have had “huge returns” because of the expansion.
“We are better able to attract large conferences and group meetings that we previously could not accommodate under one roof,” she explains, giving the example of a recent booking of the Louisiana Sheriffs Association, which requires one hotel location, for the next two years.
She adds that with the new rooms the property has also been able to open up weekend group rates, “which was previously challenging.”
Pinnacle is planning to build a second casino on an adjacent site—the $350 million, 400-room Caribbean-themed Sugarcane Bay—and is awaiting approvals.
After its two Lake Charles riverboat casinos were badly damaged by Hurricane Rita in 2005, Harrah’s sold Pinnacle the assets, including the two gaming licenses, which are being used for Sugarcane Bay and a proposed Baton Rouge casino.
Lake Charles also has the 400-room Isle of Capri with 14,000 square feet of meeting space and two riverboat casinos. And at Vinton, west of Lake Charles, Boyd Gaming operates the Delta Downs Racetrack & Casino, which expanded three years ago with a 203-room hotel and an 850-seat events center.
Shreveport-Bossier City is “Louisiana’s Other Side.” The tag of its CVBs new rebranding campaign capitalizes on its heritage as the hub of the Ark-La-Tex region, where state boundaries meet.
Here, five riverboat casinos, each with between 1,000 and 1,600 slots plus table games, come complete with hotels and meeting space. It’s the South’s third largest gaming market with revenues of $844 million last year, down from $847 million in 2006.
The Shreveport side of the Red River has the 514-room Sam’s Town with 18,000 square feet of meeting and event space, and the 403-room Eldorado with 6,200 square feet. Both are within walking distance of downtown’s Shreveport Convention Center, which debuted in 2006.
Bossier City provides the 570-room Diamond Jacks with 20,000 square feet, the 188-room Boomtown with 2,400 square feet of meeting space, the 600-room Horseshoe with 3,797 square feet and a new bar and entertainment facility featuring country musicians.
Together with Country Music Television (CMT), in May the Horseshoe Casino & Hotel unveiled the first CMT Crossroads Bar, a $3.3 million, 3,300-square-foot facility, and an extension of CMT’s television series.
Gaming has been an integral part of New Orleans’ tourism recovery. The South’s fourth largest casino market had revenues of $703 million last year, up from $696 million in 2006.
Big Easy total visitors increased from 3.7 million in 2006 to 7.1 million last year. They topped 10 million in a record-breaking 2004.
“Momentum is returning with multiple recent successes, yet we still have a long way to go to successfully re-image the destination,” stated Stephen Perry, New Orleans CVB president and CEO, in announcing the figures.
Among successes are February’s NBA All-Star game that attracted 50,000 fans, Mardi Gras festivities last year that attracted 800,000 and the 25th Annual French Quarter Fest in April that attracted a record-breaking 435,000.
And the American Library Association, the first post-Katrina citywide convention, with 17,000 delegates in November 2006, announced it would return in 2011 and 2018.
The city boasts the state’s only land-based commercial casino, Harrah’s New Orleans, close to the Morial Convention Center. It has 115,000 square feet of gaming, a 500-seat theater and a two-year-old 450-room hotel with an AAA four-diamond rating.
The metro area has two riverboats: Treasure Chest, adjacent to Kenner’s Pontchartrain Center, which has more than 46, 000 square feet of exhibit space, and Boomtown New Orleans at Harvey with 4,000 square feet of meeting space.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital, has two Mississippi riverboat casinos.
Under Columbia Sussex ownership are the three-deck, 1,000-slot Belle of Baton Rouge Casino and the adjacent 300-room Sheraton Baton Rouge Convention Center Hotel with 14,000 square feet of function space, which adjoins the city’s convention center, River Center.
Farther upriver, and across from the capitol area, is the 1,000-slot Hollywood Casino. The former Casino Rouge was rebranded by Penn National Gaming in February last year following an $8.5 million renovation that included entertainment venue expansion.
Pinnacle Entertainment is planning Riviere, a 550-acre resort. The $250 million first phase is expected to include a 1,500-slot single-level riverboat casino and a 100-room hotel. In February, voters in East Baton Rouge Parish approved the project.
Louisiana has three land-based tribal casinos.
Operated by the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe, the expanded Paragon Casino Resort is in the central Louisiana town of Marksville.
The existing facility featured a 2,000-slot casino, a 335-room hotel and an 18-hole golf course. Expansion openings began in May last year with the new Mari Convention Center, which includes a 23,000-square-foot showroom and an 8,000-square-foot ballroom, followed in October by a second hotel tower with 250 luxury rooms.
Among other new facilities are a spa, an indoor tropical pool with swim-up bar, a retail atrium, a 550-seat buffet, and three movie theaters.
Mark Becker, the resort’s director of convention sales, says the property is benefiting from its location.
“To get the best attendance, and with people driving, many state and regional groups prefer a central location and we’ve booked groups for a second year that usually rotate,” he says.
“We’re now focusing on corporate business. We’ve had lots of success with trade shows, and government business has been surprisingly strong,” he continues, adding that the resort’s largest group ever, 800 people booked for January, is a government group.
Florida
Sunshine State gaming has been gathering speed on a number of fronts.
The Seminole Tribe, which four years ago opened its two AAA Four Diamond-rated Hard Rock casino hotels, has expanded its Tampa casino.
The 500-room Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood, which has 17 restaurants and lounges and 40,000 square feet of meeting space, in April, opened a new 12,000-square-foot poker room.
Last November, the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa, which has 10,000 square feet of meeting space, held the grand opening for a $120 million expansion. The new two-story wing features new restaurants and additional gaming space.
In 2004, Broward County voters approved Las Vegas-style slots and poker at racetracks and jai alai facilities. It now has three casinos.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma’s first casino resort debuted almost four years ago: the 150-room Cherokee Casino & Resort at Catoosa outside Tulsa, which opens a $125 million expansion in January.
Currently, the resort has more than 1,700 gaming machines, 7,500 square feet of meeting space and an 18-hole championship course. The addition will add a 350-room hotel tower, a convention center seating over 1,000, a concert arena, new restaurants, and additional gaming space.
The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is also building a $108 million expansion that includes a 140-room hotel with meeting space opening late this year at its West Siloam Springs casino.
North of Siloam Springs, near Joplin, Mo., where Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri meet, the Quapaw Tribe is unveiling the $301 million Downstream Casino Resort this summer followed by a new 222-room hotel in the fall.
The resort comes complete with the Eagle Creek Golf Club—the former Loma Linda Country Club acquired early this year—five restaurants and meeting rooms for up to 200 people
In Thackerville near the Texas border, the Chickasaw Nation will later this year open its Winstar Casino expansion, adding 4,000 new slot machines in five gaming plazas and a 2,500-seat convention/showplace theater. A 400-room hotel opens next year.
Other States
Alabama is getting its first tribal casino.
The Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the state’s only federally recognized tribe, is building the $250 million Wind Creek Casino and Hotel in southwest Alabama near the small town of Atmore, 55 miles northeast of Mobile.
Scheduled to open are a casino with 1,600 electronic bingo games in December and a 236-room hotel next spring. Included will be an area for live entertainment, and an 8,000-square-foot ballroom, and breakout rooms.
North Carolina has one tribal casino—Harrah’s Cherokee Casino & Hotel in Cherokee with Class III gaming, 50 miles west of Asheville at the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Owned by the Eastern Band of Cherokees, it expanded three years ago with a second hotel tower. It features 576 guest rooms, a 15,000-square-foot conference facility; a 1,400-seat pavilion, and 2,700 slots.
In West Virginia, Tri-State Racetrack & Gaming Center, a greyhound facility near Charleston, is slated to launch table games this fall and is planning a $250 million expansion that includes a hotel and conference center. The Tri-State Racetrack and Gaming Center can currently handle groups of up to 300,
Caribbean
The Caribbean has more than 100 casinos scattered across 15 nations.
Notable among Bahamas casinos are Atlantis Paradise Island, the Crystal Palace Casino on Cable Beach, the Isle of Capri Casino Lucaya on Grand Bahama, and Pinnacle Entertainment’s two-year-old casino on Great Exuma, which adjoins a Four Seasons.
Atlantis’s casino, the Caribbean’s largest, has more than 50,000 square feet of gaming with over 800 slot machines and 75 game tables. The resort now claims the region’s largest ballroom, also 50,000 square feet, built as part of a new conference center unveiled last year that brought total meeting space to 300,000 square feet.
Plans for a $2.3 billion, 3,550-room competitor on Nassau’s Cable Beach ceased last spring when Harrah’s pulled out and developer Baha Mar Resorts filed claims against the company in the New York State Supreme Court. Baha Mar Resort called for a 1,000-room Caesars resort and casino and three Starwood-brand hotels.
However, the project’s first phase was marked by the opening in June last year of the Baha Mar-owned Sheraton Cable Beach Resort (a former Radisson) with an $80 million makeover. Earlier, Baha Mar invested $50 million in improvements to the adjacent Wyndham Nassau Resort & Crystal Palace Casino, which is acquired in 2005.
New casinos are planned for Puerto Rico, where more than 20 of them are part of hotels. Slated to open Nov. 1, 2009 is the Sheraton Puerto Rico Convention Center Hotel, which will feature a conference center offering more than 35,000 square feet of meeting space.
IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) is developing a 264-room Crowne Plaza with a casino in San Juan as part of a shopping and office complex near the Hato Rey Business District, and slated to open next year.
Rio Mar Beach Resort & Spa, a Wyndham Grand Resort with 48,000 square feet of function space, reopened its 7,000-square-foot casino in November last year after a $5 million expansion and remodeling.
With lots of resorts with casinos, the Dominican Republic will see another opening this fall—Palace Resorts’ Moon Palace Casino, Golf & Spa Resort. The all-inclusive luxury resort at Punta Cana will boast 1,743 rooms and more than 60,000 square feet of meeting space divisible into 32 and with a capacity for groups of up to 2,560.
The U.S. Virgin Islands has one casino—at the Divi Carina Bay Beach Resort & Casino in St. Croix, which has 6,300 square feet of indoor meeting space.
A second is planned, the 400-room Wyndham St. Croix Golf Resort & Casino. It will be the cornerstone of a $250 million complex slated for a 2010 opening that will include a 43,000-square foot conference center, a 25,000-square-foot casino, a spa, and an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus signature golf course.
In April, the Jamaican Government announced a proposed $1.8 billion development that would include a 75,000-square-foot casino and 1,500 rooms at the Rose Hall resort.
On Aruba, the 411-room Aruba Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino, which has 11,600 square feet of meeting space and the island’s largest casino, completed the first phase of a $40 million renovation in March that included its south tower. It expects to finish the project late August.
In time for New Year’s, the 481-room Westin Aruba Resort, completed a $22 million renovation. The second phase included a makeover of its 20,000-square-foot meeting facility; the first phase included upgraded guest rooms and the installation of 200 state-of-the-art slots at its Casablanca Casino.
