Analysis: Four recent casino additions have much in common

By Richard N. Velotta

Friday, March 6, 2009 | 2 a.m.

In roughly the last six months, four resorts have opened their doors in Southern Nevada.

The most recent one — the M Resort at St. Rose Parkway and Las Vegas Boulevard South — has a lot more in common than you might think with the previous three, the Eastside Cannery on the Boulder strip, Aliante Station in North Las Vegas and Encore on the Strip.

M, which opened March 1 to rave reviews, has most frequently been compared with another relative newcomer to the market, the Red Rock Resort in Summerlin. M’s beautiful architecture and composition, its look and feel and its gorgeous pool area are bound to be stacked up against Red Rock, which, like M, aspired to be a piece of the Strip experience well away from the boulevard.

But I think it’s no accident the last three resort openings also bear a resemblance to M.

The Eastside Cannery aspired to raise the bar on the Boulder strip. M was designed to do the same thing in Henderson. A top-floor restaurant deemed to be a social gathering point was a signature attraction of Eastside Cannery. The same can be said of M’s Veloce Cibo.

Aliante Station is at the far end of the Las Vegas Valley. So is M. Station Casinos did everything it could to get maximum bang for its bucks in the development of Aliante Station, and it shows. Although the look isn’t as spectacular as Red Rock’s, the quality is high. M did the same thing, getting a familial assist in the design department with Rio developer Anthony Marnell II working side by side with his son’s M project.

So how does it compare with Encore? Physically, Encore is ahead of M in nearly every category, but listen to the sound bites offered by Anthony Marnell III and Steve Wynn. Both emphasize the guest’s experience. Both look to their respective staffs to provide an experience that will make or break success. Both yearn to give guests a piece of the Old Vegas experience — Wynn with his tribute to Frank Sinatra, Marnell with his reminiscences of the Rio.

Marnell has his sights set on offering a value proposition at M, a quality many longtime visitors to Las Vegas yearn for. But some of the early criticisms of M have suggested $20 buffets and $40 steaks do not represent a value proposition. The reality is that it’s 2009 and the critics were hoping for 1970s prices.

Get real, people. The costs of most things have gone up in 40 years, and you’re simply not going to get a meal of the quality that Marnell wants to provide for $3.95. Considering what I saw at the March 1 opening, a $20 buffet is pretty reasonable.

The same critics who want the cheap food also are expecting M managers to loosen their slots and pay 3-2 on blackjacks instead of 6-5. Again, get real. The company has to pay for a $700 million building ($1 billion if you count the land it’s on). You don’t do that by giving back more money than people put into the slots. And, while I’ve never met a blackjack player who likes 6-5 returns for a 21, it should be noted that in my perusal of the casino that only the single-deck games — the ones that offer the greatest advantage to a skilled player — are the only ones with 6-5 payments on blackjack. All the others pay 3-2. If you don’t like that, go somewhere else to play. And maybe that’s a point M’s competitors should look at when it comes to attracting customers.

In my view, M holds a lot of promise and it certainly has more upside than down. One of the little surprises that M offers is soft drink dispensers scattered throughout the casino. It’s a cool idea, one I’m wondering will be replicated by rivals.

Time will tell.

Boulder City tourism: Not just the dam

When Boulder City Councilman Mike Pacini, a representative to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, came up with the idea of having a Boulder City Tourism Summit, he was told such an event would be a success if 50 people showed up.

But when the doors opened at the Boulder Creek Golf Club last month, there were more than 130 people representing 19 tourist attractions, 10 hotels and eight restaurants.

Although many may think Hoover Dam and Lake Mead are the only things to see around Boulder City, they’d be mistaken.

Boulder City, a Nevada oddity in that it has no gaming within the city limits, is filled with primarily outdoor attractions. Although many of those are centered around the dam and the lake — hiking, touring and watercraft activities — there are plenty of attractions and wide-open spaces just a short drive from the Las Vegas Valley.

The hikes range from very easy to moderately difficult. The lake and the river below Hoover Dam offer a paddle-wheel boat cruise and raft trips as well as kayaking and canoeing.

Favorite hikes include the 3.7-mile Historic Railroad Trail from the National Park Service’s Alan Bible Visitor Center through five old railroad tunnels to Hoover Dam and the 17-mile River Mountains Loop Trail with accessible trail heads along the entire route.

Boulder City has a nice range of golf from the tree-lined municipal course, the 27-hole Boulder Creek Golf Club to the elite Harrah’s Entertainment-operated Cascata Golf Club.

For the historian, there’s the Boulder City-Hoover Dam Museum at the Boulder Dam Hotel, the Automotive Museum at St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, the Nevada Southern Railway Museum and, near Nelson, south of Boulder City, Eldorado Canyon Mine.

For the more adventurous, Boulder City is home to air tours by Stars and Stripes Air Tours and Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters, Sky Dive Las Vegas and, for recreational shooting, the Boulder Rifle and Pistol Club and the Desert Lake Shooting Club. Bootleg Canyon on the edge of town has dual attractions, the world-class Mountain Bike Park and Bootleg Canyon Flightlines, a zip line course.

Most of those attractions were represented at the tourism event, which was attended by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who heads the LVCVA, and authority executives Rossi Ralenkotter and Terry Jicinsky.

For Pacini, who is being term-limited out of office later this year, the event was the culmination of a lot of work. He worked with the 12-member Boulder City Tourism Commission, which meets once a month, and had some assistance from the tourism authority and its advertising and multimedia consultants, R&R Partners.

Boulder City is branded as “A world away for a day,” and its primary tourism market is the Las Vegas Valley.

As the weather warms, Las Vegans should check out some of the attractions of Boulder City that not only are light on the family travel budget, but will help other Nevadans trying to keep their heads above water in this rough economy.

Tourism summit

While the Nevada Legislature ponders whether it should consolidate the Nevada Tourism Commission with the Nevada Economic Development Commission, a grass-roots group of state tourism entities plans to rally in Carson City on March 18 to strategize.

The first-ever half-day Nevada Tourism Summit is planned at the Gold Dust West in Carson City and will feature presentations by former Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt-Bono and Bill Siegel, chief executive of Toronto-based Longwoods International, a tourism and market research consultant.

Hunt-Bono is a member of the state’s Tourism Commission and headed it when she served as lieutenant governor. Siegel has assisted clients in six countries and 37 states and is known for a recent case study on the collapse of the tourism industry in Colorado when it quit funding its marketing.

The rally is sponsored by Save Nevada Tourism, a group of tourism organizations in Northern Nevada, including the Carson City Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Carson Valley Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau, the North Lake Tahoe Chamber of Commerce, the Incline Village-Crystal Bay Visitors Bureau, the North Lake Tahoe Resort Association, the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority and the Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce.

The summit is occurring a day before the first scheduled legislative committee hearing on proposed budget cuts to the Tourism Commission.

Siegel’s report on Colorado, “What Happens When You Stop Marketing? The Rise and Fall of Colorado Tourism,” is expected to be a rallying point for the group.

Gov. Jim Gibbons’ budget proposes a 58 percent cut in the state Tourism Commission budget, including a plan to merge it with the Economic Development Commission. Most tourism leaders say merging the commissions would be a mistake, citing a downturn in Colorado in the early 2000s when that state pulled its tourism marketing money.

Sully sullied

Lane Hudson, writing on the Huffington Post, reported that a United Airlines pilot on a Washington D.C.-to-London flight made light of US Airways pilot Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger’s emergency landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you are on the left side of the plane, you will see a spectacular view of New York City and US Airways’ new runway, the Hudson River,” the pilot was reported to have said over the plane’s intercom.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel also joked that Sullenberger was supposed to attend an event after the Academy Awards show, “but at the last second he veered into the fountain outside the hotel.”

The Flight 1549 crew was giving a standing ovation by the House Aviation Subcommittee when it met for hearings on the accident last week.

Pay toilets up in the air

Please don’t share this with Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air.

Ryannair, one of Europe’s leading discount airlines, is reportedly considering coin slots on their toilet doors and charging to use the restroom.

Ryannair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary told the BBC that the plan is under consideration. But a spokesman for the airline quickly told Bloomberg that “Michael makes a lot of this stuff up as he goes along and while this has been discussed internally there are no immediate plans to introduce it.”

The United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority said airlines it regulates have no obligation to provide a toilet on their planes so, hypothetically, Ryannair could charge for them.

Ryannair generates about 20 percent of its revenue through ancillary charges and is notorious for offering deeply discounted flights, but requiring passengers to pay for things such as beverages, preferential seating and checking a bag.

Locally, Allegiant has created its own revenue success story with ancillary revenue streams, but I doubt that company would ever consider pay toilets on their jets. Would it?

Richard N. Velotta covers tourism for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. He can be reached at 259-4061 or at [email protected].