Like a bar, with less clothing

Monday, Aug. 27, 2007 | 10 p.m.

Under an oppressive desert sun, 1,500 revelers squeeze in and around a complex of pools at the Palms, showing off their dance moves and late-summer tans. The hotel's weekly bacchanal, Ditch Fridays, is in full flare.

The sloshed and the giddy sled on plastic saucers down an artificial hill, created with 25 tons of snow, then drop into chest-high heated water. DJs spin a blend of rock and hip-hop, and cabanas overflow with pretty people in designer swim trunks and bikinis. A glass-bottom pool, which serves as the ceiling of an outdoor bar, echoes swingy decadence, 1970s-style.

“It feels like spring break,” says Heather Fordham, a trainer from Texas visiting with 20 girlfriends. “The only difference is that we're all in our 30s and we need more time to recover from our hangovers.”

Along the Las Vegas Strip, new-breed pools have dovetailed with nightclubs to become a magnet for attracting customers to casinos. Growing from simple hotel amenities to small resorts after steroidal makeovers -- a $35 million expansion at the Palms -- many have their own entrances, bottle service and admission policies enforced by doormen at a velvet rope.

To justify the investments, properties strive to outdo one another by conjuring flashy approximations of Gen X joie de vivre. Some hotels manufacture sex appeal by wooing local strippers with free cabanas. Ordinary guests at elite pools are provided with free goodies such as ice-cold towels, frozen fruit kebabs and sunblock.

Mandalay Bay has a full-blown gambling den overlooking its wave pool ($100-minimum blackjack tables afford a view of topless sunbathers in a discreet section called Moorea Beach). Wynn Las Vegas has a poolside menu from the kitchen of one of its restaurants, Tableau.

And at Tao Beach, a spinoff of Tao Nightclub in the Venetian, employees resolve problems that are easily endured. “We have guys who walk around with water tanks on their sides,” said a Tao owner, Richard Wolf, “and their job is to spritz guests so nobody gets too hot.”

Wolf instructs his door staff to maintain a two-to-one ratio of women to men. “There are girls who clean people's sunglasses, and then there's our mood director,” Wolf said. “He makes sure that groups of guys and groups of girls get introduced to each other all day long.”

Happening pool scenes have proved a profitable gambit for casinos.

“Casinos are turning swimming pools into clubs and leveraging what had been underutilized assets,” said David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV.

And the pools' what-happens-here-stays-here atmosphere also puts players in a casino-friendly frame of mind, said Anthony Curtis, president of lasvegasadvisor.com, which tracks local action.

In 1941 El Rancho placed its pool facing the street. Driving from the desert, Schwartz said, “The idea was that you'd be drawn by the refreshing pool and would check in at the El Rancho rather than proceeding downtown -- in your nonair-conditioned car -- to where most of the casinos were.”

Fifty-one years later the Rio started the city's first modern pool party. But the enterprise was elevated to its current state by Chad Pallas, who made a name by overseeing a nightspot called Baby's at the Hard Rock. After a while, management decided that Baby's had cooled, and Pallas needed to justify his paycheck. He envisioned Rehab, a Sunday afternoon party at the pool. That was in 2004, and Las Vegas day life has not been the same.

According to Pallas, Rehab grosses about $6 million a summer. “Before Rehab, the pool was generating $15,000 on a Sunday. Now we have cabanas going for $2,000 to $5,000 per day, and 40 people were on the waiting list today,” he said. If that is not enough, showoffs at Rehab have developed a custom that they call making it rain. “They drop $100 bills from the cabanas up above,” Pallas said, “and watch the crowd down below go crazy. We have a guy come in every Sunday on his private jet. He stays for the day and makes it rain.”

How expensive can it get for high-end customers seeking a raucous Sunday afternoon? Randy Lund, a branch manager for mortgage broker Meridias Capital, has been going to Rehab since Day One. He says he spends more than $100,000 a year on cabanas, food and alcohol for him and his guests. Yet as much as Rehab is about recreation, it is also about business.

“I bring Realtors and clients and they love it at Rehab,” Lund said.

But these kinds of free-spending customers are tough to lure. And in Las Vegas' highly competitive atmosphere, everyone tries to outdo everybody else.

In recent years the Mirage, Wynn Las Vegas, Caesars Palace and Mandalay Bay have introduced what they call European sunbathing. It takes place in sequestered pools, often requires an additional admission, and men always pay more than women (as much as $50 a day, and with day beds or cabanas, costs can easily reach $1,000 for an afternoon).

Toplessness may be the latest tactic in the Las Vegas pool wars, but not for all. Palms and Rehab have never gone that way (“I like having something left to the imagination,” Pallas said).

Tao Beach did it for a while before retreating. The manager of a rival pool says Tao's new modesty stems from the fact that it stays open after dark as part of Tao Nightclub and it was hard to persuade guests to cover up after sunset.

Wolf explained it differently: “We ultimately decided that it would be better, in terms of being a classy, fun, hip beach club, to not be topless.”

Whatever the case, it apparently has not hurt business. As Sunday evening encroaches, Rehab winds down and the party kicks up at Tao Beach. A drummer from “Stomp” plays on top of a DJ's beats and a trumpeter roams among the Buddhas meant to imbue an exotic air. A bride-to-be in a monokini rubs lotion into a muscle boy's biceps, and Wolf marvels over a man with the Tao logo tattooed on his stomach. For the people behind this pool-club-cum-disco, it all adds up to profits. But, looking around, even among the fabulousness, a pall sets upon Wolf's face.

What's wrong? “I'm noticing that as it gets later on Sunday, the crowd shifts,” he said. “It seems that we have more guys and fewer girls. And, to be honest, it concerns me.” Then he bucked up, declaring, “But, don't worry, I'm going to fix it.”