Making ice Isn’t the most exciting of occupations, so when ice manufacturers gather for their regional and national meetings, they’re seeking a healthy dose of fun and adventure.
The Missouri Valley Ice Manufacturer’s Association, which meets biannually, frequents casino hotels as convention sites for this exact reason. The group has found that gaming venues offer a host of activities that keep attendees happy, while the meeting planner likes the value offered by gaming facilities and the ability to keep everyone corralled under one roof.
“We’re a casino kind of group,” says Tom Howat, the association’s executive secretary. “Gaming properties generally have affordable rates if you bring a crowd of people in, and our people like to play cards and games—and it’s fun for them because they usually win!”
His national group has long been exposed to the delights of casino hotels; the International Packaged Ice Association has brought its national convention to Las Vegas four times.
And now the growth of the casino hotel market in the Midwest has provided Howat, as well as other meeting planners, with a variety of regional meeting options that just were not possible to come by in even the recent past.
For its part, the Missouri Valley Ice Manufacturer’s Association has booked meetings at casino hotels as far and wide as Deadwood, S.D., and Elizabethtown, Ind.
And for its most recent convention it chose Lumiere Place in St. Louis, a city that has become one of the premier casino destinations in the Midwest.
Pinnacle Entertainment operates both Lumiere Place in downtown St. Louis and River City Casino 10 miles to the south. The company plans to renovate both properties over the next several years.
Pinnacle’s investment in the two properties is a sign of the confidence the company has in the casino hotel product as well as the St. Louis market, says Gerad Hardy, director of hotel and development at River City Casino and Lumiere Place Casino Hotels.
“Certainly in St. Louis we’re enjoying a resurgence. It’s been a fantastic year in terms of citywide meetings,” he says.
Pinnacle’s River City Casino includes 90,000 square feet of gaming, a variety of restaurants and bars, a coffee house and retail shopping.
In March of this year, Pinnacle broke ground on an $82 million expansion of the 56-acre facility. It will include a 230-room luxury hotel, a 14,000-square-foot multiuse entertainment complex and a 1,600-stall parking garage. The new offerings are slated for completion by 2013.
River City’s sister property, Lumiere Place Casino & Hotels, sits on a 7.5-acre stretch in downtown St. Louis. That complex includes a 75,000-square-foot gaming floor, seven award-winning restaurants as well as the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis, with 200 guest rooms and 20,000 square feet of meeting space; the 294-room all-suite HoteLumiere, with 8,000 square feet of meeting space; and a 400-foot tunnel linking the complex to several area highlights, including the Mississippi Riverfront.
Hardy says Pinnacle also intends to revamp the property, though he admits it’s early going in the planning.
“We’re still in the design stage as far as a concept,” Hardy says. “But we are looking to start renovations next year and it will be a complete renovation, so we’ll have a brand-new room and front desk product.
“It won’t be an update,” he says, “it will be a true renovation.”
As for the success of the casino hotel model, it has a particular appeal for meeting planners because it is a one-stop shop, according to Hardy.
“When you stay at the average convention center hotel, you certainly get a nice room product and maybe 30,000 or 40,000 square feel of convention space” he says.
“But at places like Lumiere, you can get multiple food and beverage outlets, and entertainment, both in the form of gaming and nightlife,” he asserts. “It’s a property that’s self-contained so that a planner can keep everyone on-site and they’ll still have a wonderful time.”
St. Louis and Lumiere Place appealed to Howat and his group of ice manufacturers because of proximity and the quality of the product. The downtown location was also a plus, Howat says, because it gave his attendees choices.
“We could go to the casino if we wanted, but we also had the choice of going to the best nightspots in St. Louis,” he says. “St. Louis is not known for its taxi cab service, so location was important—anything we wanted to do was right in the neighborhood.”
Detroit
Up in the North, meeting planners have discovered another hot casino hotel market in Detroit.
“It’s 90 minutes or less from 60 percent of the nation’s population, and it’s on an international border,” says Lisa Williams, sales director of the MGM Grand Detroit.
As for the property itself, it is close to some of Detroit’s top destinations, such as Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, and Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions.
Williams says that meeting planners like the property because of the “feel and luxury of the product.”
There are separate entrances for the casino and the hotel, which allows guests to experience—if they prefer—either the relative tranquility of the hotel lobby and its surrounding areas or the hustle and bustle of the casino floor.
While some guests can do without cards and games, casinos and adjoining entertainment venues do set casino hotels apart from the typical convention hotel, one casino official notes.
“We certainly have an entertainment package that is unlike a normal hotel offering,” says Randy Villareal, vice president of hotel operations for Detroit’s MotorCity Casino Hotel.“With the various bars, showrooms and restaurants, we offer planners much more than they can get at a regular hotel.”
But, Villareal emphasizes, MotorCity also has the function space necessary to entice corporate and association group business to head to his property.
“We think we’re a bit unusual in that we have 67,000 square feet of function space for a 400-room hotel, so we have a tremendous amount of space we can make available to planners,” Villareal says.
“Our facilities sell our property first, and the entertainment options are really the icing on the cake,” he says.
MotorCity’s hotel, casino and restaurant/banqueting space are in separate buildings connected by bridges.
“You don’t have to stumble through slot machines to get to the front desk,” he says. “You can be as active as you want in the casino, or have nothing to do with it. We’re totally self-contained and that makes a big difference to planners—if they don’t want the casino experience, they don’t have to be part of it.”
That said, the casino experience and the entertainment options that usually accompany casinos are part of the appeal for groups staying at these properties.
While MotorCity is a beautiful property and has a great location, says Kathy Crotty, executive assistant for the Independent Mitigation and Cleaning/Conservation Network (IMACC), the presence of a casino on the property played a part in bringing her group to the MotorCity.
“[The attendees] appreciate the beautiful rooms, a clean facility, fantastic food, and plenty of entertainment options,” Crotty says. “And the casino has a lot do with helping us boost attendance.”
IMACC, which is an association of about 400 independent contractors that work with insurance companies to respond to insurance claims, started holding annual conventions about four years ago. Three of the conventions have been held at the MotorCity.
The conventions have been incredibly successful, Crotty says, as she has doubled the number of attendees and the amount of exhibit space required since that first convention. And post-convention surveys of attendees show that about 99 percent want to continue holding the convention at the MotorCity Casino.
Crotty’s event is pretty much self-contained, she says, and other than a pub crawl on the first night of the convention (held every November), everything else takes place in the MotorCity. This is possible, she says, because she not only has access to the ballroom and adjoining breakout rooms, but she can also book entertainment venues like the Sound Board.
She does have some advice for the property, however.
“I hope they expand,” she says. “Because the way we are growing we are going to need more space.”
Mike Bassett, a freelance writer, doesn’t gamble much, but has eaten well and played golf (poorly) at some pretty nice casino hotels.
