Las Vegas Business Press :: David G. Schwartz : Bellagio seems a bit bashful about turning 10

Bellagio seems a bit bashful about turning 10

Back on October 15, the Bellagio quietly marked a milestone: It celebrated the 10th anniversary of its opening. This event wasn't celebrated as merrily as casino anniversaries used to be, but it still gives us a useful reference point for considering the Las Vegas Strip's current status.

Once, casinos threw huge parties to remind the community that they were a year older. Large cakes in the shape of the hotel were common, with showgirls gamely framing the desert in well-circulated publicity photographs. Casinos bought advertisements that trumpeted their age, frequently offering specials ($5.55 prime rib on our fifth birthday!) to further drive home the message.

Today, casino managers are positively bashful when it comes to the age of their properties. They would no more throw a party with a giant cake replica of their casino than they would set all their machines to free-play. I'm not sure exactly when this change happened, but I'm certain that it did.

David G. Schwartz

The question is why. Most likely, it's because of the accelerated product cycle in Las Vegas today: A five-year old resort is considered middle-aged, and a 20-year old one is practically a doddering codger (if we're subscribing to the anthropomorphic fallacy and assigning human qualities to inanimate hunks of steel, concrete and glass). In that atmosphere, you don't want to draw attention to your age.

This is one way that Las Vegas is almost entirely atypical. Usually, businesses stress their long life: if they've been serving customers since 1907, it's usually a safe bet that they know what they're doing. But in Las Vegas "new" doesn't mean "fly by night." It means a new life beginning today -- a more exciting life than the old one.

So Bellagio executives can be forgiven for not rolling out the commemorative desert delicacies.

But what difference has a decade made for the Strip? Less than you might think. The news stories about the Bellagio's opening were respectful of the artistry and capital Steve Wynn had sunk into the project ($1.6 billion bought you more resort -- and more respect -- in those halcyon days), but they were surprisingly pessimistic about the prospects for the future.

Many pundits forecast that, after the current building wave was finished, the Strip would be overbuilt: the Bellagio, Paris, Mandalay Bay, Aladdin, and The Venetian, they feared, would swamp the market. With 127,000 rooms available, operators would have to work overtime to boost visitation.

In addition, gaming stocks had been skittishly sliding. All in all, the experts agreed that 1998 wasn't a good time to bet on casinos.

Fast forward 10 years, and we are in much the same position: A new Wynn hotel about to open amid another building boom. Gaming stocks have declined precipitously in recent weeks. The broader economic portrait is gloomier than it has been for years, and certainly less buoyant than it was in 1998.

Still, it's hard not to glance at some of the doomsayers of yesterday, then scan today's news stories and commentaries, and feel a bit of déjá vu. It's never prudent to by a blind optimist, but it's hard to shake the feeling that the pessimists are a little like the folks who bet on the joker at Big Six -- while the odds are against them, and their long-term prospects are dim, they might just get lucky someday.

David G. Schwartz is director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His latest book is "Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling."

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