Welcome to LVCasinoInfo.com
A Complete Guide to Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos
Inside you will find tons of Vegas information that you will not find anywhere else. Property maps of virtually every major casino, hundreds of room pictures, tips for getting to and having a great time while in Vegas plus a quick ,easy hotel & casino reference guide all to hopefully help you plan a more enjoyable Las Vegas vacation. Check back often for the latest updates plus frequent news and commentary on the everything that is Las Vegas!
Latest Vegas News, Comments and Rants
November 12th 2008
Aliante Station Open in N. Las Vegas
The $662 Million Aliante Station opened last night to the usual fanfare of fireworks and celebrities despite the state of the economy in Las Vegas. Located in the far north part of the Vegas Valley, it is intersection of the Beltway and Aliante Parkway. The numbers are typical of a locals place; 202 rooms, 120,000 Sq. Ft. casino filled with tons of (bad?) video poker, heavy on the casual food including a decent sized food court and a 16 screen movie theater.
Ironically, it opens on the same day Station Casinos reported terrible financial numbers. Due largely to the debt it took on to go private earlier this year, they posted a 3rd quarter loss of $23 million with revenue declining 10%. Not a great day to open a casino! I am very eager to check the place out and see what they got for their 650+ mil. With that price tag and the current environment, particularly in NLV, I don't know how they get their money back. By comparison, the Eastside Cannery that opened in August, "only" cost $250 million. The other problem facing Station is that any money made on Aliante will almost certainly come at the expense of Texas and Sante Fe Stations and Fiesta Rancho. With new development at a virtual halt in Vegas, they will just be cannibalizing themselves. As always with any new casino endeavour, I wish them all the luck in the world but like I said... Not a great day to open a casino!
November 6th 2008
Las Vegas Sands close to Bankruptcy???
Las Vegas Sands, owners of the Venetian and Palazzo, announced today that they were in default of certain convenents on their long term debt. This means that the lenders can call for the debt to be paid back immediately, triggering an almost certain bankruptcy. Sheldon Adelson, who owns 70% of the company, has already lent them a half a billion of his own money and may have to pony up more if he can find additional financing.
Its an amazing fall for a company that just a year ago was on top of the world. Adelson was one of the richest men alive and they had new projects going in Vegas, Macau, Singapore and Philly. All of that construction activity turned out to be the downfall as they took on way more debt than they can handle in the current horrendous environment. While the economic situation on the strip is certainly not Adleson's fault; when the downturn started, instead of trying to lure in the serious gambler he did everything in his power to drive them away by destroying anything even remotely playable in his casinos. Meanwhile, just next door at Wynn, he put in some decent plays and is weathering the storm much better than the guys at LV Sands. Of course, that is a gross over simplification but the point is that Wynn knows how to bring a customer in while Adelson was just good at fleecing them. I personally know of several high-end player who bailed on Venetian long ago. In times like this, a casino needs its regulars who won't think twice about putting in 8 hours a day in front of a machine. When things were good, the Venetian said "the hell with the gambler" and instead banked on the conventioner to pay the bills with $300 dinners. Well those people have stopped coming and his regulars are now playing at Wynn, the Palms and Green Valley Ranch.As the old saying goes... You reap what you sow!
October 26th 2008
Caesar's Octavius Tower Preview
Caesars Palace's new Octavius Tower is nearly completion and the Las Vegas Sun has a preview of the rooms. Designed during the pre-downturn heyday, they are going for the "boutique" hotel look that is so popular these days with the acommpanying prices, of course. The only problem, which is the same that MGM faces with City Center, is that the debt load taken on to build these super sweet top of the line rooms will not be able to be supported by the cash coming in the door. The days of the casino subsidizing thier insane construction budgets with $300 meals are over and they certainly wont be able to get away with $500 a night to pay the bills. The new 665 room tower with some additional convention space and restaurants cost a billion dollars. By comparison, the new Eastside Cannery tha opened in August was build from the ground up for a quarter of that.
The bottom line is that while all of the new luxury rooms built in the past few years are certainly nice, they cost way too much to build. Sadly, I think there may be a bankruptcy or two in the near future due to the crushing debt load some of these companies have taken on, Harrah's and MGM in particular. Upside is that when it happens, the winner will be the Vegas visitor who will be able to experience the best of Vegas at reasonable prices once again.
October 22nd 2008
Some Vegas Nuggets
It's been a little while since my last update. I work for a big financial company so as you could imagine, the last couple of weeks have been chaotic to say the least. Fortunately, we haven't been all that negatively impacted by the mortgage crisis and my company still exists!!! Anyway, I hope to be making a few updates in the next few days including some new property maps that are WAY overdue to get posted.
Continuing with the economic crisis theme, an interesting tidbit was run on CNBC yesterday talking about casino stocks. Anyone who has been following them knows they have been absolutely slaughtered in the past year but one stat jumped out at me. At this time last year, Sheldon Adelson's (builder of the Venetian and Palazzo) share in his company, Las Vegas Sands, was worth $30 billion. He was even the richest man in America for a brief few days. Today, it is now worth $3 billion. Now that is no small change and he is hardly poor but could you imagine losing 90% of your net worth in 1 year. Brutal!!! The numbers were similar for MGM Mirage's Kirk Kirkorian. Jim Cramer commented while MGM's stock chart was on the screen that it was the "ugliest chart he has ever seen in his life!" Of course, I would also happen to be the proud owner of some of those shares too. Ughhh...
In other Vegas news, some pieces of good news emerged on the downtown scene recently. If there was a ever a place that needed some good news, rumors have it that the shuttered Star Trek attraction from the Hilton will reappear downtown at the long struggling Neonopolis. This is excellent news if it turns out to be true. Neonopolis has been a ghost town since it opened and anything to bring people in will be a huge upgrade. It also will help bring people downtown who probably would never go there otherwise. I hope it works out for them but I am not holding my breath. The other downtown news involves the Plaza. Apparently, the owners, Tavares Group, are planning a remodel of the place. They have setup several different prototype rooms to decide which way they want to go. They want to "elevate the Plaza to just a notch below the Golden Nugget." That indeed is a worthy goal since the Plaza has been pretty crappy for a long time. However, I have my doubts about the management at the Plaza. Tavares has owned the Plaza as well as the Vegas Club for years now and they haven't done a single thing positive to either of those properties. If anything, there are worse off than when they took over. I know downtown has its issues and big capital projects are hard to justify but there just hasn't been any effort on their part to really make a difference. As with the Star Trek/Neonpolis news, I wish them the best of luck but there has been a lot of talk downtown in recent years but not a whole lot of action.
