Whatever the secret, they have been packing M in

By Liz Benston

Tuesday, March 31, 2009 | 2 a.m.

To enter M Resort is to step back in time, to 2006, before the recession slashed discretionary spending.

Lines for the buffet and coffee shop snake around banks of slot machines, where most seats are taken. Well-dressed locals pack bars and lounges, some waiting for a seat in busy restaurants.

While some suburban casinos struggle to attract more business, the M’s restaurants are serving more than 8,000 covers per night. Weeknights look much like weekends, with long lines for the players club and the buffet.

Within a week of opening, it hired another 250 people to handle business that was better than projected based on the openings of other locals casinos in the past year.

Among those surprised by the resort’s fast start is Chief Executive Anthony Marnell III, 35, who helped open the Rio, then his father’s, in 1989.

“This is the busiest I’ve ever seen a food and beverage department,” Marnell said about his self-named resort.

The M has benefited from being the new kid on the block, as many locals want to see what all the fuss is about. This is also a time for gamblers, convinced that new casinos loosen their slots to attract crowds, to press their luck.

Still, the M’s early success has surprised skeptics, given the sorry state of the economy. Las Vegas casino executives from all over town have roamed the casino floor, trying to sniff out the secret formula.

As it turns out, the formula isn’t a big secret.

M offers a free buffet with all rewards club memberships. Free food is a surefire marketing strategy for casinos and especially for the M, where the buffet is a top attraction featuring a demonstration kitchen that hosts live cooking shows. Since opening, the M has added 100 seats to the buffet.

There’s more free stuff in the form of self-serve stations throughout the casino that dispense nonalcoholic drinks — eliminating the need to wait for, and tip, a cocktail server.

True to management’s early claims, there are no $15 martinis or $50 steaks. And customers have given the food high marks. There’s a bar where fancy beers on tap cost no more than $3.

Unlike marketing pitches for “loose slots,” claims of edible, reasonably priced food are easily judged by patrons.

The lobby features sleek furniture in creams and chocolate browns, a grand piano and an expansive view of the Las Vegas Valley through multistory windows, making the resort feel more like a Hollywood Hills mansion than a casino.

The casino offers a good selection of video poker games with payback percentages on the high end for locals properties.

The rewards club offers gamblers one point for every dollar played on most machines and returns $1 in cash for every 333 points, or $333 played. Gamblers can spend that cash on gasoline or prescription drugs along with more typical casino fare. Although the giveback is at the high end of suburban casinos, some locals casinos make up for lower overall givebacks with “point multipliers” on certain days, usually when business is slower.

“They’re doing everything right to drive traffic,” said Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor newsletter for gamblers. “Word has gotten out about how good their buffet is, and they have good video poker (machines).”

Casino empires have been built on little more.

There’s also the buzz, which builds on itself. “People like things that have momentum,” Marnell said.

All of this may not entirely explain the crowds at M, which is signing up more than 5,000 people a day to join the resort’s iMagine Rewards program — a big number in a good economy and more than other suburban casinos have experienced in recent years.

The “X factor” touted by Marnell is harder to test but is evident in the number of smiling employees giving out directions, thanking customers for patronizing the property and apologizing for wait times. In pitching his resort to a skeptical public, Marnell cleverly appealed to locals’ pent-up outrage over pricey food and bad service in Las Vegas, saying he would raise the bar on service while keeping prices low.

Locals are a fickle bunch who base their decisions on their experiences, not a CEO’s claims. Enough bad experiences at a casino and gamblers will go elsewhere.

Marnell says he is “working out some kinks” in the customer service department that cropped up because the resort was not staffed to handle the flood of business.

Marnell wasn’t surprised to draw a large number of people living within a 10-mile radius — the casino looks to be in the middle of a desolate patch of desert when more than a hundred thousand homes sit to the north, east and west, including the affluent Southern Highlands, Seven Hills and Anthem communities. These neighborhoods haven’t been as hard hit by foreclosures as some others in the Las Vegas Valley, Marnell says.

He also expected to take some business from competitors that are farther afield. Some of his customers live closest to Station Casinos’ Green Valley Ranch, Sunset Station and Red Rock, as well as other casinos.

What has surprised Marnell is the number of tourists stopping at the M on their way out of town, saying they will be back next time.

“Customers will tell you exactly what they like and don’t like,” Marnell said. “It became very clear to me that this is more than trial business — it’s repeatable.”

Time will tell how long the buzz will last and how profitable using loss leaders such as free buffets and cheap beer to draw crowds will be for the property long-term. The M Resort is privately owned and doesn’t publish financial information.

With less than a month in business, Marnell says he’s not about to sit back and relax.

“Going into work every day is like being a cat hanging onto a tree by one claw,” he said. “All my fingers are crossed and if you took off my shoes you’d see all my toes crossed.”