Not only are Nevada’s gaming destinations looking better than ever, they’re presenting attractive buying opportunities as never before.
Las Vegas continues to up the ante, hoping once again to beat the odds. New upscale projects and expansions are being rolled out, infusing impressive rooms and dazzling gathering spots into an increasingly competitive marketplace. The Reno-Sparks area continues its revitalization, unveiling new attractions following massive casino resort development. Half of Laughlin’s casino guest rooms have received makeovers. Mesquite is attracting new sports markets. Henderson has added to its casino resort collection.
Time for Deals
Figures from the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (LVCVA) indicate that perception issues and the economy have taken a toll on meetings business.
According to LVCVA research, the number of meeting attendees visiting the city during the first half of 2009 was down by 28.6 percent over the year before—far steeper than the 6.8 percent decline in leisure travelers.
As a result, planners are finding unprecedented opportunities in the city, according to Gary Schirmacher, senior vice president-strategic account service for Experient.
"Those who are booking short term are in a great position when booking Las Vegas," he says. "If you are meeting in the next few years, and if the company or organization has the stability to be able to book, now is the best time to start looking and to book any size of group. More hotels than ever are waiving attrition fees on short-term business."
Drew Varga, executive director of meeting sales at the new M Resort, south of the Strip, has a similar observation.
"I’m seeing group rates quoted that I haven’t seen in 15 or 20 years," he says. "Everyone is more flexible and has been coming out with packaging—added amenities, upgrades, discounts off master accounts. It’s an amazing dynamic."
Hopes are high that the new $9 billion CityCenter opening on the Strip later this year will regenerate interest. Three of the four hotels opening in the complex will account for almost 6,000 of 2009’s expected 8,700 new hotel rooms. It will also have 310,000 square feet of the 583,022 square feet of new meeting and convention space slated to come on-line this year.
For its 50th anniversary year, the Las Vegas Convention Center expects to finish with a healthy and enviable 70 percent occupancy, pretty much its average in recent years. It expects to run this in the next two years, and is continuing to book larger conventions and trade shows into 2021 and 2022.
"It is attendance and short-term corporate bookings that have suffered," says Jeremy Handel, LVCVA spokesman. "The cancellations of early this year have subsided. Rates are down. The booking window is much shorter. Las Vegas is good value. It’s a great time for groups to visit,"
LVCVA has moved to combat the downturn. Last year it opened a call center to help boost convention attendance.
"It’s free of charge," Handel says. "We call people to invite them. We’ve had success and hopefully we help associations update their lists."
In 2008’s fourth quarter, CVA staffers made over 1,000 sales calls in 100 days to 200-plus cities, and a meeting planner incentive program booking program was effective for bookings made and held from June through August of this year.
When the U.S. Travel Association and other trade groups in March launched "Meetings Mean Business," a campaign against negative perception, LVCVA was quick to join in with its own campaign. It launched a meetings toolkit and new website, www.vegasmeansbusiness.com.
New in Vegas
Last year, 8,600 new guest rooms came onto the Las Vegas market, along with 200,000 square feet of additional meeting space. Major 2008 openings on the Las Vegas Strip included the 3,068-suite Palazzo Las Vegas, 599-suite Palms Place Condo Hotel & Spa, 1,282-suite Trump International Hotel & Tower and 2,034-suite Encore. Away from the Strip, openings included Aliante Station and Eastside Cannery.
With 60,000 square feet of meeting and event space, Encore, featuring a casino, five signature restaurants, a nightclub, a spa and retail space, is connected to the 2,716-room Wynn Las Vegas, which has an additional 200,000 square feet of meeting space.
CityCenter will soon make its debut on 67 acres between the Bellagio and Monte Carlo resorts. Its 1,495-suite Vdara Hotel opens Oct. 1; the 392-room Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas opens Dec. 4; and the 4,004-room Aria Resort & Casino, Dec. 16.
Aria will have 300,000 square feet of meeting and convention space; Vdara, 10,000 square feet and the Mandarin Oriental, 12,000 square feet. All began taking reservations last summer.
Crystals, CityCenter’s 500,000- square-foot retail and dining district, opens Dec. 3, and a Cirque du Soleil production celebrating Elvis will debut next year. A joint venture of MGM Mirage and a subsidiary of Dubai World, the project will also have a fourth hotel, the 400-room Harmon Hotel, set to open in late 2010.
In July, Caesars Palace’s new 110,000-square-foot convention facility debuted, bringing its meeting space to 320,000 square feet. Connected to the existing Palace Tower meeting space, it features two 52,000-square-foot ballrooms.
"Demand for events at Caesars Palace supported the expansion of our facilities," says Michael Massari, vice president of meeting sales and operations for Las Vegas Meetings by Harrah’s Entertainment, which operates Caesars. "Many customers wanted the Caesars Palace product but their capacity and configuration needs were not met by existing
space. We now have the ability to serve them."
The new convention space is part of a $1 billion expansion that includes the 660-room Octavius Tower, topped out last year, which was due to open last summer. Harrah’s Entertainment, however, announced in January that it was postponing tower construction.
As part of its $750 million expansion and renovation, Hard Rock Hotel and Casino opened a 490-room tower in late July. Another new tower with 374 rooms is scheduled to follow in December. Earlier this year, Hard Rock unveiled The Joint, a 4,000-seat concert hall, part of a 75,000-square-foot increase in meeting and event space that will bring the total to 82,000 square feet.
Work is progressing on the $1.8 billion, 3,000-room Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino on a site between Bellagio and CityCenter. Expected to open in fall 2010 with 167,000 square feet of meeting space, the project was taken over by lender Deutsche Bank. Originally planned as a Grand Hyatt, a new operator had not been announced at press time.
Construction on another megaresort originally scheduled to debut next year, the 3,800-room Fontainebleau Las Vegas, with 393,000 square feet of meeting space, has been put on hold. With construction 70 percent complete, developers have filed for Chapter 11 protection and, in another filing, are seeking relief from contracts for 20 conventions and trade shows that were due to arrive Jan. 1 through June 2010.
The standout among construction sites on hold is Boyd Gaming Corp.’s $4.8 billion, 5,000-room Echelon Place, where work stopped in summer 2008.
Also on hold is an $890 million expansion and renovation of the Las Vegas Convention Center that would add 90,000 square feet of new meeting rooms. Some initial work has been done, including the opening of a police substation.
Downtown, the Golden Nugget is taking reservations for its new $150 million Rush Tower, scheduled to open Nov. 20. The 500-room tower will include a new restaurant, retail shops, a pool and additional casino space.
In North Las Vegas, 20 miles from the Strip, the $662 million, 202-room Aliante Station held its grand opening last November.
Station Casinos’ 11th hotel-casino includes six restaurants and a food court; 14,000 square feet of meeting and convention space; a 16-screen movie theater; and a 600-seat showroom. A 200-seat bingo room was added in May.
To the east of the Strip, Cannery Casino Resorts last year opened its new 307-room Eastside Cannery Casino & Hotel, with 20,000-square feet of ballroom and meeting space, on the site of its Nevada Palace
Casino.
South of the Strip, Michael Gaughan’s South Point Hotel and Casino expanded last year with a third hotel tower, adding 830 rooms and an additional 10,000 square feet of meeting space, which brought the room count to 2,163 and meeting and convention space to 160,000 square feet.
Henderson
With more than 3,500 rooms and more than 250,000 square feet of meeting space in such properties as Green Valley Ranch Resort, sprawling Henderson is Nevada’s second-largest city.
"Meeting planners choose Henderson because of its tranquil appeal, allowing delegates to focus on business objectives. It is close to the Las Vegas Strip while offering amenities that can rival any big city," says Ed Kirby, national sales manager for the Henderson CVB.
Downtown’s Henderson Convention Center, popular for trade and consumer shows, has 10,000 square feet of column-free meeting space. A plan to close it for a year-long remodeling and expansion has been put on hold.
Three years ago the city added the adjacent $9 million Henderson Events Plaza with over 60,000 square feet of function space, including the canopy-shaded Henderson Pavilion seating 4,000.
"Several of our annual signature events, such as the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Ho’olaule’a Pacific Islands Festival and our Super Run Classic Car Show, have seen an increase in out-of-market attendance," Kirby says. "The majority of Henderson events have free admission, which attracts visitors from surrounding states. Another draw is the free celebrity entertainment."
Located 10 miles south of the Las Vegas Strip, Henderson’s newest property is the 390-room M Resort, Spa and Casino. The resort provides views of the Las Vegas skyline and features a 1,900-slot casino, over 60,000 square feet of meeting space, nine restaurants, a spa and a 100,000-square-foot pool and entertainment plaza.
"We have a wonderful location, close enough to the heart of the chaos, but with the advantage that a meeting will not lose people," says Drew Varga, executive director of sales.
According to Varga, two weeks after its opening last March, the resort was completely booked by an auto parts manufacturing company.
"We’ve started to see a rebound. Business has been strong although the ADR is off from what we had projected earlier," he says.
Also in Henderson, Lake Las Vegas, a master planned community 17 miles from the Strip, boasts golf courses, Loews and Ritz-Carlton hotels and the 300-unit MonteLago Village Resort, which unveiled a 3,829-square-foot events center in July 2008.
Laughlin
Located on the banks of the Colorado River 90 miles south of Las Vegas, Laughlin has nine casino hotels with a total of 10,610 rooms and 125,000 square feet of meeting space.
More than half of its casino guest rooms have undergone refurbishing as part of renovations following acquisitions made in 2006 and 2007.
Last year, its 1,907-room Aquarius Casino Resort, formerly the Flamingo Laughlin, completed a $20 million room renovation. Earlier, the 1,500-room Tropicana Express, the former Ramada Express, underwent an $11 million makeover. The Colorado Belle and Edgewater properties, with a combined 2,500 rooms, underwent extensive renovations after a group led by M Resort developer Anthony Marnell III acquired the properties from MGM Mirage in June 2007.
"We’re a SMERF market and we’ve seen a trend to lots more short-term family reunions during summer," says Meg McDaniel, senior manager-regional sales, at the Laughlin Visitors Bureau. "Associations are very budget conscious. For the leisure market, people have still been arriving with their boats and jet skis on the weekends. We didn’t have the gas prices of summer last year—and special deals have kept us afloat."
Laughlin, drawing heavily on the Southern California and Arizona markets, launched a rebranding campaign last year geared to promoting the outdoors and water activities.
"We are a gaming destination, but we are also a lot more. The river is an important amenity, but I’m always amazed to find that many people don’t know we have a lake," McDaniel says.
Just two miles upriver from Laughlin, Lake Mohave, part of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, has 150 miles of shoreline. Laughlin area attractions and activities include birding, hiking through Grapevine Canyon, as well as exploring old mines and historic Route 66.
Mesquite
Close to the Arizona and Utah borders 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Mesquite recently held the grand opening for the $20 million, 650-acre Mesquite Sports and Event Complex, which includes five multiuse soccer fields and is the new home of October’s annual RE/MAX World Long Drive Championships finals.
"We are attracting new special and sporting events like crazy," says Gina Mann, LVCVA’s Mesquite sales executive, adding that the first annual Mesquite Tri State Marathon will be held in November and the annual World Arm Wrestling Championship in December 2010.
In February, the city signed an agreement with a developer for the proposed Desert Falls International Sports Resort, billed as the world’s most comprehensive tournament, training, practice and championship facility for both indoor and outdoor sports. Planned for the first phase are a stadium soccer field, 20 softball fields and 16 tennis courts.
Mesquite’s meetings friendly casino hotels include the 450-room Casablanca Hotel and Casino, the 710-room Virgin River Hotel & Casino and the 215-room Eureka Casino Hotel, which has completed a $30 million renovation. The city is also home to a half-dozen resort golf courses.
Citing economic conditions, Las Vegas-based Black Gaming closed the 900-room Oasis Casino in December; its two other properties, Casablanca and Virgin River, continue to operate.
"The closing of the Oasis, and potential re-opening, is based solely on demand," says Marty Rapson, Black Gaming’s vice president of marketing. "Currently, we utilize the hotel rooms at the Oasis when demand exceeds our other two properties. We are prepared to expand operations as soon as the economy dictates."
Reno/Sparks
The neighboring cities of Reno and Sparks offer more than 20,000 hotel rooms and two meeting and convention focal points. The 500,000-square-foot Reno-Sparks Convention Center has 2,000 rooms within walking distance, while another 6,500 rooms are located downtown near the 118,000-square-foot Reno Events Center and the National Bowling
Stadium.
"We know it’s a tough economy and people are cautious," says Ellen Oppenheim, president and CEO of the Reno–Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority (RSCVA). "We feel we have a very affordable destination, a great convention center and a great downtown convention complex. Everything is very compact, and a tremendous amount is happening. Hotels have made big investments."
In May, RSCVA launched a campaign called "Meeting Planners’ Recession Survival Guide," with a tongue-in-cheek website at www.plannersurvival.com. As part of the campaign, its staff called 1,600 planners in a telephone blitz in June and July.
Another component is an offer to pay $10,000 if a meeting booked at the convention center, the event center, bowling stadium or the Reno-Sparks Livestock Events Center doesn’t beat or match the lowest rental fee offered by a competing city.
"No one’s taken us up on it," Oppenheim says.
The city opened the $25 million, 28,000-square-foot Reno Ballroom adjacent to the events center and bowling stadium last year. Eight casinos, almost all with hotels, are within walking distance.
Also within walking distance is the new $50 million Reno Aces Baseball Stadium, home of the Pacific Coast League’s Reno Aces. The stadium opened in April and will anchor a planned retail and entertainment district.
Reno-Sparks Convention Center is now connected by a covered pedestrian skybridge to the 1,000-room Atlantis Casino Resort Spa.
The skybridge was unveiled last November as the resort neared completion of a $70 million renovation and expansion.
A new spa, the project’s final component, opened in January. Expansion at Atlantis also included a new 14,500-square-foot ballroom and eight meeting rooms, which brought the resort’s total meeting space to 47,000 square feet.
The 1,635-room Peppermill Resort Casino Reno rolled out a $400 million expansion in phases between fall 2007 and fall 2008. It added a 62,000-square-foot ballroom, bringing its total meeting space to 102,000 square feet; a 600-room tower; a spa and health club; a new nightclub; and new restaurants.
The 1,995-room Grand Sierra Resort recently spent $5 million on upgrades to its 200,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space, following the completion of the first phase of a $90 million renovation and expansion project.
In February last year, Sparks’ largest hotel, the 1,600-room John Ascuaga’s Nugget, which has 110,000 square feet of meeting space, completed a $17 million renovation of its 600 tower rooms. More recently, it completed the $1 million remodeling of its third floor executive conference center.
New hotels in Reno include a Hilton Garden Inn and Holiday Inn Express and Suites; Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites are scheduled to open during the coming months.
The city of Sparks unveiled its new Whitewater Park at Rock Park in June. Spanning almost 1,000 feet of the Truckee River, the new attraction comes four years after the opening of downtown Reno’s successful whitewater park, which has class 2 and 3 rapids and 11 drop pools along 2,600 feet of the river.
Another new attraction is Legends at Sparks Marina, a $1.2 billion retail and entertainment center, which held grand opening celebrations last summer. It now has 50 stores and restaurants, including a 300,000-square-foot Scheels All Sports, which opened last year.
Lake Tahoe
Tahoe’s North Shore has five casinos, including the 422-room Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa & Casino in Incline Village, which offers 50,000 square feet of function space. The destination serves up 200,000 square feet of space at more than 30 meeting sites and 7,000 guest rooms.
The Cal Neva Resort, Spa and Casino in Crystal Bay, which was owned by Frank Sinatra in the early 1960s, and once popular with celebrities, has 219 rooms, a 350-seat show room and 16,000 square feet of meeting space. At press time, the property, which was acquired by Canyon Capital Realty Advisors through foreclosure, was up for sale.
Developers acquired the Tahoe Biltmore and the Crystal Bay Casino Hotel in 2007. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is reviewing an environmental impact study for the proposed Boulder Bay project, which calls for a hotel, meeting space, a casino and a shopping village
With 4,000 hotel rooms, Tahoe’s South Shore has 4,000 hotel rooms. In Stateline, Nev., four casino hotels—MontBleu Resort, Casino and Spa; Harveys Resort & Casino; Harrah’s Lake Tahoe; and Horizon Casino Resort—together provide 69,000 square feet of meeting space.
Construction was halted on the $420 million Chateau at Heavenly Village, located across from Harveys, while the developer sought financing. The project called for 470 guest rooms and a 50,000-square-foot convention center.
Carson City
In Carson City, 30 minutes from both Reno and Lake Tahoe, Carson Gaming in March last year opened a 100-room Courtyard by Marriott adjacent to its Casino Fandango. It was the final phase of a $45 million expansion that inc-luded a movie theater and additional casino space.
Meeting facilities in Nevada’s capital also include the Carson Nugget Casino, Gold Dust West Hotel Casino and the non-gaming Plaza Hotel & Conference Center, which can handle groups of 350 people.
