A changing Vegas

What do you think are the five or whatever best/most notable changes or openings in Vegas in recent years?

 

In no particular order:

- Closing of the Riv: Symbolic end of an era. Also a transition for what the north strip could become after it's gone.
- Opening of the SLS: Lots of lessons learned on that one. Painful message that "build it and they will come" is superficial and now false. Also a sign to not overengineer, overinvest, overindulge. Too much of a good thing (chic modern resorts), it turns out, is not a good thing.
- The closing of 3/2 blackjack (I suppose that one's creative). Significant turn in gambler sentiment.
- Solidification of the Club era (opening of Hakkasan, et al)
- Opening of Cosmopolitan and Aria.

 

- Gambling becoming less important. Restaurants, clubs, pools, and shopping are huge draws now.

- Downtown becoming popular. 10 years ago nobody wanted to go to Fremont Street. Now it's a place to be.

 

Improvement of off-Strip restaurants: top notch Asian cuisine is now centered off-Strip; even downtown is beginning to look interesting. This is mostly good for locals, but we tourists can take advantage of this as well. Sadly, this was accompanied by the loss of some of the best Strip restaurants. Restaurant Charlie and Alex immediately come to mind, although there were others.

Deemphasis of gambling. Gambling is still huge, but it's not the only game in town, so to speak. This is mostly a good thing.

Homogenization of the Strip. Owned mostly by a handful of corporations, casino hotels have become more alike. So have shows (the Cirque empire comes to mind, along with Cirque wannabe Le Reve), restaurants and stores. Even gift shops are giving way to corporate Walgreen's and such. There are far fewer quirky places anymore.

 

The effort(s) to eliminate long hauling by the taxis (still a long way to go, but a step in the right direction).

The shift of emphasis on night and day clubs, street bars, pool parties, etc in lieu of gambling, both on the Strip and Downtown.

More emphasis on retail establishments (The Linq area, Ballys retail bazaar, Walgreens...WALGREENS?...WTF, LOL).

Resorts World to open in the depressed North area of the Strip.

The appeal of Downtown Fremont moving more towards the younger, hip crowd, with the re-do of Derek Stevens' D and Golden Gate, outside bars, Slotzilla, GN changes (private pool, shark tank, hip eateries, clubs).

Some of these changes are not necessarily best but certainly notable. And will change how some of us do Vegas in the years to come.

For me I can see myself venturing more and more to the off-strip local properties where Downtown once was my home.

 

Also for Downtown, Zappos and the Downtown Project's efforts to gentrify the area.

 

The continuing financial problems of the gaming conglomerates, especially Harrah's/CET/whatever they call it now, have cast a long shadow over the lights of Tinseltown.

 

the tightening of comps, freeplay, promo chips. Promo chips used to be the norm, now almost non-existent.
Private charter jet going bye-bye. Used to have a every Friday departure / Sunday return. Jet would hold about 15-20 persons.
Hosts scrutinizing more on the expense side. Making it more of a challenge to get what you are due (especially with high theo trips)

 

The opening of the Cosmopolitan. I think that it's influeneced the thought process in terms of development even though it's not the perfect resort and can't be really replicated.
The renovation of IP into Linq. This is a path to bring something new to the strip without implosions.
The development of downtown. Its becoming a better alternative to the strip because there is space for independent entities to do things without a corporate casino boss involved.
The explosion of Asian cuisine. This may be something that Vegas could become known for.
And in the notabke but not best category, the Linq district because it's spurred retail development even though I think it's already being overdone.

 

Biggest to me - introduction of resort fees as a way of raising rates without raising rates, esp on hotel search sites. I would rather they just raise rates so we know exactly how much it costs.

As others have mentioned, the de emphasis of gambling in vegas. with that is the addition of casinos like SLS
(D, GG), that are geared for the younger crowd and also includes party pits and clubs for the kiddies. Also included is fremont street east with their new clubs and businesses (including the container park).

Tightening of comps and machines and pushing of 6/5 bj on most strip properties.

Elimination of smaller casinos like the Riv, 'dust and other smaller hotels on the strip.



I know like others I could mention the new stuff like the Linq, cosmo, SLS, the wheel, city center, but they don't appeal to me so other than walking through them I hardly notice them.

 

Underlying a lot of these changes are two big stories of things that didn't happen - the failure of Fontainbleu and Echeschlong Place.

Those caused a rethink of all of Strip development for years and years.

 

Agree with the rest of your comments, but the resorts planned for the next several years are chic, plush, modern resorts. Over investing was also not an issue at SLS. They did it on the cheap, relative to other projects. This is a generalization.

The issue at SLS is location which ironically could end up being their strong suit after the north strip mega resorts are built.

Nick

 

Most notable changes would be the last wave of construction, both the failed projects (since they have turned the north strip into a ghost town and possibly accelerated the demise of Sahara and Riviera), and the "successful ones" (Cosmo and CityCenter), which successfully opened but with a change of ownership and bankrupcy for one, and mountains of debt and lawsuits for the other. Add to that their general de-themed trend, and their massive impact on the strip skyline.

The trend towards clubs and away from gambling.

And the revitalatization of downtown, with new openings and rebrands, FSE growing to a permanent street party, Mob Museum and many other things to do.

 

Whatever has changed, didn't work for casinos and didn't work for the customers.

Lots and lots of investment with huge debt load and not based on solid feasibility studies, hence resulting in losses for casinos and losses for the patrons via increased cost of a Vegas holiday.

 

Yet....Vegas had a record number of visitors in 2014, and may break that record in 2015.
Clearly, something must be working well.

 

I'd say the truth is somewhere in between those two perspectives.

eksantric's comment is a tad over the top, as it was more timing (a crisis exponentially increasing borrowing costs at the same time it crushed revenues) than lack of feasibility that led to such a poor financial position. I also don't think a vegas holiday's cost IS all that increased, and is certainly lower than the casinos would like it to be. The overbuilding and overborrowing has brought room rates DOWN, and if the casinos were in the black they'd be charging MORE not less, because they'd be able to.

That being said, # of visitors probably isn't the best metric, because they are getting those visitors at a very discounted price point. Places like Wynn, Cosmo and Aria are charging nowhere near the rates they thought the market would bear, casino revenues still aren't great, and low roller hotels are surviving on conventions and busy weekends and using rooms almost as loss leaders for volume the rest of the time. It says something about just how crazy the expansion of the 90s and 00's was that they can set visitor records, and still have too much capacity and rock bottom rates.

 

1. The economic improvement - Not Vegas specific, but a big factor in all things Vegas.
2. Resort Fees
3. Gambling de-escalation and escalation of non-gaming revenue
4. De-themed or non-descript hotels
5. Rise in airline prices - again not Vegas specific, but a big factor that likely shifted some demographics (I think this is a big upstream factor in clubbing growth)

 

Vegas has been failing ... well, forever. Pick an era, doom was the pending word.

It seems ironic many VMBers even show up from some of the comments here and in other threads. Maybe smartone has it wired.