Friday, September 12, 2008

City Center's ARIA Preview and July's Casino Numbers

The Los Angeles Times was allowed a sneak peek at the rooms in ARIA, the largest component of MGM Mirage's City Center. The rooms will be loaded with technology never seen in a hotel room before. Some of the nicest features include the drapes opening and lights coming on when you enter and the lights going off and the tempurature adjusting when you check out. You will also be able to control the lights and temperature, play music and video all run through the 42" flat screen and a joystick remote console. The coolest thing about the whole setup is that when the battery starts to run low on the console, it notifies housekeeping to replace it! That is pretty slick.

Of course, the downside to all of this technology is room rates that will assuredly be through the roof. It's been many years since Vegas has had a shortage of luxury hotel rooms and these 4,000 will certainly not help stretch your vacation dollar. Sadly, rooms at FountaineBleu will be similarly equipped (I-Macs in every room) and similarly priced it opens in 2009. It will be very interesting to see how the high end plays out once these additional 8,000 rooms comes on-line. Thus far, that sector has fared pretty well compared to the mid and low end places but this definitely won't help room rates that are already down 25%. If nothing else, this will benefit the Vegas visitor as places like Bellagio and Venetian will be forced to compete with better deals.

Along those lines... the casino number for July came out this week and showed a continue trend of declining revenue. Clark county, which included Vegas and all point south, was down 15% over last year with the strip showing similar results. This is the seventh consectutive month of declines and there is no sign of it letting up anytime soon. I did hear one analyst point out that "at least next year's numbers will be easier to beat." I guess you can always put a positive spin on $150 million less in taxable revenue! Let's hope that the casino companies pain is our gain in the way of continued discounting on everything from rooms to shows.


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