LOOKING IN ON: BUSINESS

Thursday, June 28, 2007 | 7:21 a.m.

Balcony? Check. Rooftop pool? Check. High ceilings and MP3 hookups? Sure.

A virtual hotel? You bet.

Aloft, the latest "lifestyle" hotel brand from Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc., is reaching further afield than any of its competitors in the hotel or casino industries to cultivate in-demand Generation X and Y customers.

In fact, Starwood is drawing from a different universe - the digital world known as Second Life - to generate buzz for aloft, a midpriced hotel chain that will launch next year. The hotel company is one of several businesses opening in Second Life, a brightly colored, opportunistic world where people use digital avatars to get jobs, meet people, buy and sell goods (converting real money to virtual and back again) and engage in recreational activities.

The first hotel company to take this digital plunge, Starwood hired digital experts to create detailed 3-D renderings and monitor the action as digital customers hung out in the digital lobby, bought digital drinks and even chatted up digital women (or men). Input from Second Life customers on color palette, furniture and other details has been incorporated into the latest plans for a chain of hotels it plans to build across the country.

Spiraling land and labor costs have made Las Vegas a tricky place to do business, even for the hippest, most exclusive brands.

High construction costs in Las Vegas helped derail plans for Starwood's more expensive W brand. The company is betting on Las Vegas developer Jeff LaPour to build a cluster of four hotels, including a 223-room aloft, at the northeast corner of Flamingo and Paradise roads.

Paradise Road may be the answer for enterprising developers because it's less expensive than the Strip and has enough traffic to support many high-occupancy, nongaming hotels, local broker David Atwell said.

Casinos are notoriously protective of their blackjack games and have sophisticated ways of identifying - and banning - card counters. Yet, Planet Hollywood and Red Rock Resort opened their doors for the taping of the upcoming Kevin Spacey movie "21," which is based on the best-selling book chronicling the exploits of the MIT card-counting team, "Bringing Down the House."

MGM Grand, one of the team's biggest targets, wasn't a site for the film.

It would have been ironic for MGM Grand to welcome a card-counting team, albeit a fake one. Besides being one of the world's largest and busiest casinos - therefore a popular haunt for card counters and so-called "advantage players" - the MGM Grand, up until fairly recently, was a ripe target for player teams that aim to beat the house. Although casinos these days are admittedly more skilled at detecting teams than they were in the 1990s when the MIT gang was plying its trade, MGM Grand has recently garnered the reputation as a lousy place to count cards because of policies implemented to more effectively track advantage players.

Making money in a declining gaming market isn't easy.

But Four Queens owner Terry Caudill, who has owned the downtown casino for about four years, has shown that he can do it.

After more than three years trying to make money at Binion's , owner MTR Gaming is folding its hand by selling to Caudill, who can supposedly operate the property more efficiently (and closely) from his headquarters across the street.

The $32 million sale may pay off for MTR (which bought the property from then-manager Harrah's Entertainment for $20 million) but the gamble on the historic brand did not.

Binion's has benefited lately by hosting daily poker tournaments while the famed World Series of Poker is under way at its newer, adopted home at the Rio.

Clouding the money-losing property's reputation is a lawsuit in which Harrah's says it is owed a $5 million bonus payment from MTR because the casino, under Harrah's management, made money. MTR countersued, saying that Harrah's used underhanded accounting to show a nonexistent profit on paper.

Caudill says he will make money by spending more than the previous owners and managers did - at least $10 million in the first year and more thereafter. He says he has more than doubled operating profit at the Four Queens in four years after spending millions on upgrades like new slot machines and remodeled rooms.

Making bigger profits, longer-term, will require more dramatic improvements that are still under consideration, Caudill said.

"I think downtown has a bright future and will experience a resurgence in the next few years," he said.