No More Cheap Shrimp Cocktail
 Matt Richtel - NYTimes
| | (Jared McMillen/NYTimes) |
Las Vegas — They are coming to blow up a lonely outpost of low-cost Las Vegas.
Before daybreak on May 9, an explosives team plans to demolish the Boardwalk Hotel and Casino, a recently closed budget oasis on the Strip with a giant clown face on its facade and signs advertising $1.99 shrimp cocktails. It is giving way to this city's latest incarnation: luxury.
The Strip has become a considerably more expensive place to spend the night — roughly $125 on average last year, a 23 percent increase in just two years — and it is expected to get more so. At least four new luxury hotel projects are under way that will replace old standbys, like the Boardwalk, and add more than 10,000 rooms.
The hotels are catering to an influx of convention-going business travelers and deeper-pocketed visitors patronizing high-end restaurants, shops and shows. The hotels here are heralding flat-panel televisions and fancy shower soaps as they once did a cheap place to sleep off a night in the casino — whose tables and slots subsidized the rooms.
Loud imposing smoke-filled casinos still anchor this town, and $50 rates are still typical at hotels downtown, away from the action. But the Strip, the boulevard of Las Vegas dreams, is no longer home to the low-cost weekend getaway.
Las Vegas "was known as the capital of cheap rooms and cheap food," said Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Mirage, the giant hotel and casino company developing the Boardwalk site. "It was known as the capital of the cheap vacation — and you got what you paid for. We used to give coupon books for free drinks and two-for-one buffet. Now we have 300-thread-count sheets and turn-down service."
The trends conform to Las Vegas's effort to redefine itself as a more diversified destination, offering superb but costly restaurants ($88 for the 12-ounce grilled Kobe rib-eye steak at Tao at the Venetian) and shows like Cirque du Soleil's "O" ($93.50 to $150 a seat). The new features have helped keep Las Vegas growing even as many new casinos — from small card houses to Indian casinos — are springing up around the country and providing local outlets for gamblers.
Not everyone is happy about the face-lift.
"It'll probably price us out of the market," said Dr. Bill Waugh, 61, an eye surgeon from Olympia, Wash., visiting Las Vegas with his wife, Patti. They were staying at the Flamingo, an older hotel on the Strip, for $91, the lowest nightly rate he could find. Two years ago, he said, he found a room at the Stardust for $35.
"When the cheapest room is $250," he said, "it's time to do something else."
Mr. Feldman and others said budget travelers were still coming to Las Vegas, but they might be coming less frequently and represented a smaller share of a steadily growing tourist base. In 2005, 38.6 million people visited, up from 37.4 million the year before and 29 million in 1995, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Many of the new visitors were business travelers, who drive up hotel prices by attending weekday conventions and who can put their room charges on their expense account. In 2005, 6.2 million visitors identified themselves as convention delegates, up from 5.7 million in 2004, the visitors authority said.
Here, they give credit for the change to the opening in 1990 of the Sands Expo and Convention Center, which drew business travelers, and to the 1989 opening of the Mirage, the first modern luxury hotel here and the brainchild of the developer Stephen A. Wynn.
On April 28, Mr. Wynn and his wife, Elaine, broke ground on their latest project, the Wynn Encore, a 2,000-room hotel that will have, among other amenities, a retractable glass roof on the pool. It is meant as the sister to the Wynn Las Vegas, where room rates are typically $300 or more.
Ms. Wynn says she is sympathetic to the tourist with a limited budget.
"Nobody is intending for this to be exclusive," she said of the Wynn Encore.
People "are free to come in and enjoy the environment" at the Encore, she said. "They can visit the gardens, and shop. They can buy a T-shirt for $28 that is a wonderful souvenir."
But actually staying the night, well, that may be another matter. "The budget customer is eventually going to get squeezed out" of the Strip, said Jane Pedreira, a casino industry analyst with Lehman Brothers. The rooms have to keep up with demand from wealthier visitors, international guests and business travelers, she said.
Everywhere, there are signs of the transition and of a collision between upscale and underbelly, between luxury and the lewd. Airport visitors are greeted upon arrival with neon billboards boasting of Wolfgang Puck and the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art while others depict half-naked male exotic dancers from Chippendales and Thunder From Down Under.
Developments include Project CityCenter, a $7 billion hotel, casino and condo complex that is to replace the Boardwalk; Echelon Place, a $4 billion hotel, casino and convention center on the land now occupied by the Stardust; and the Palazzo, an upscale hotel and retail center (including a Barneys New York) under construction where the Tam O'Shanter, a budget motel, once sat.
The cost of staying on the Strip is still less than a night's lodging in some big cities, and considerably cheaper rooms are available for tourists willing to travel 10 minutes to the less dazzling downtown. But the Strip is a different matter.
In 2005, the average cost of a night's stay at one of the Strip's hotel-casinos was $125.38, up from $113.02 in 2004 and $96.92 in 2000, according to the state of Nevada.
The prices are rising throughout the area, too, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. In 2005, the average nightly rate was $103 for 294 hotels and motels throughout Las Vegas, up from $90 in 2004.
"We're not losing track of the middle market," said Rob Stillwell, spokesman for Boyd Gaming, a conglomerate that owns the Stardust. But budget travelers "may not stay on the Strip," he said. "They may have to stay a little bit north, or a little bit south."
The Stardust is scheduled to close at year's end and be razed in the spring of 2007. In its place will be Echelon Place, including a 3,300-room hotel, and three boutique hotels: the 400-room Shangri-La, the 600-room Delano and the 1,000-room Mondrian — meaningful names to seekers of four-star accommodations. There will also be a million square feet of meeting and exhibition space, 350,000 square feet of shopping, and, yes, a casino.
The Stardust was built in 1958, but its west tower, with 1,360 rooms, was built in 1991 and its accommodations seem clean, if nondescript. But renovation would not be enough, Mr. Stillwell said, noting that the infrastructure must be rebuilt to meet a new definition of luxury that includes a short distance from the valet to check-in, and from elevator to rooms. In luxury Las Vegas, excessive walking is old school and low class.
"I don't understand why they can't make the Stardust go," said Chris Lorbiecki, 53, a Milwaukee resident who says she remains a regular visitor to Las Vegas, despite prices for food and lodging she finds increasingly prohibitive. She was eating a soft-serve ice cream cone and lamenting the upscale changes in the city, while standing outside the Stardust as her husband gambled inside.
The new places they're building "are for high rollers," she said. "They're not for people like us. You can get deals if you stay off the Strip, but we want to stay on the Strip."
But the hotel developers here are high rollers, too, and betting big on a luxury future. Land on the Strip has been going for $20 million to $24 million an acre, said Mr. Feldman of MGM Mirage, prices not supported by budget hotels.
Some visitors like the idea of more amenities. "I like swankier, smaller and more intimate hotels," said Lisa I. Roberts, who owns a hair salon in Bellevue, Wash., and was visiting Las Vegas on business. She stayed at the MGM Grand, paying $180 a night during the week, and though it is the current version of luxury, she found the environment too big and corporate.
Dan and Jacqueline Aynseworth, both 64, and retirees from Torrance, Calif., said they too liked and could afford the nicer hotels, with their big bathrooms and relative comfort. But they are not sure how less fortunate people can continue to afford to stay here.
"They're pushing out the more moderate-income person," Ms. Aynseworth said. "Aren't they the people who helped build Las Vegas?" |
Vallarta Weddings
Travel & Outdoors | May 2006 
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