From the Files of It Had To Happen Eventually

The weekend papers contained three stories that were interesting, but not surprising to me. They just seemed preordained to occur one of these days.

1. Ex-dealer sues over exposure to smoke. Saturday's Howard Stutz piece in the Review-Journal about the former Caesars Palace blackjack dealer who is suing because after suffering precancerous stomach cells and told by her doctor she couldn't keep sucking in second-hand smoke on her job, the resort allegedly refused to reassign her to a nonsmoking gig. I hadn't even realized that Caesars had once had nonsmoking gaming areas until 2005, when Harrah's bought the joint and got rid of them. But this won't be the last lawsuit by a cancer-stricken dealer, to be sure. MGM Mirage's Alan Feldman told me last year he expects all Vegas casinos to be smoke-free within 10 years. Maybe they're hoping the courts force it so they don't have to take the blame from the public?

2. Liquor licenses for nightclubs denied. On the heels of the $500,000 fine to P-Ho for infractions at Prive nightclub, the club itself now lost its liquor license. Again, just the first of many chips to fall in a perilous business.

3. Player heaps scorn in Series' suits. Stutz's column today about the WSOP finalist who is attacking the tournament itself was a great read. Card Player magazine editor Jeff Shulman is presently in 4th, has already won $1.26 millon and now waits with the other eight for the Final Table in November. But while the WSOP chiefs wanted the November Nine to spend the time talking up the tournament and game, Shulman says he'll toss his bracelet in the trash or auction it for charity if he wins. That it would be the editor of a publication in direct competition with the magazine that is the official sponsor of the WSOP is a script we could never predict, but it seems now predictable that sooner or later someone would use their position to devour the hand that is feeding him. Shulman's complaint is the tournament is too big, to reliant on luck, too corporate. And yet he still plays in it, covers it in his publication, took his $1.26 million? Here is again one of the charms and problems of the WSOP -- anyone can win. And anyone who can win can say and do whatever they wish. A member of the Yankees who speaks out about what an asshole Steinbrenner or a Wimbledon player who tells a reporter the Queen of England is a hoary bitch can face consequences. But the World Series of Poker has no such control over its players and that's both a good and bad thing. What a total nightmare for them if Shulman wins, though.

How big, and how much, is CityCenter?

Sorry to revisit stuff we've covered before here, but I was struck this morning once again by the fact that the media is all over the place with the price of CityCenter. Howard Stutz in the Review-Journal refers to it as a $9.1 billion project, but Liz Benston and Lisa Mascaro, both of the Las Vegas Sun, put the figure at $8.7 billion in different stories.

Benston's piece even includes this explanation:

Dubai World says at the time of the joint venture agreement, MGM Mirage estimated CityCenter would cost $7.5 billion. MGM Mirage has since increased that estimate by about $1.2 billion, with further increases likely despite recent moves to scale back some aspects of CityCenter, the lawsuit says.

So I wrote to Alan Feldman, MGM Mirage's spokesman. As recently as Jan. 8, he told VegasHappensHere.Com: "The safest apples-to-apples would be our previously stated $9.2b less the just announced $600m in savings" from shortening The Harmon. I asked at the time if that meant $8.6 billion was the current figure and Feldman said yes.

Well, that was two months ago. Today, inquiring about who's right now, Feldman replied via e-mail: "The Sun is correct. $8.7 total, $1.2 of which we are hoping to finance."

Okey dokey, then, although the Sun and Feldman can't both be correct because the Sun was operating off of figures given to Dubai in 2007 and Feldman said two months ago that the figure was $9.2 billion less $600 million. See how this can make you crazy? And this is a PUBLICLY traded company!

To Feldman's credit, back in January he did offer this caveat: "This is a number that you need to understand is moving. We continue to bid stuff, we continue to get new pricing. We talk about these numbers as if they're fixed but they're really not."

I am not casting aspersions on Stutz or any other reporter here, so please don't take it that way. These numbers change by the week or month. It's dizzying. Especially when you receive two newspapers in one every morning and the same thicket of newsprint offers different numbers. So the best I can suggest is that journalists, every single time they write about this project, ask Feldman what the current figure is.

MEANWHILE, how BIG is CityCenter? Well, in April 2007, VegasHappensHere.Com puzzled over that, too. Different reports had it at 76, 66, or 67 acres. MGM Mirage's original literature when the project was announced said 66 acres, a New York Times reporter called it 67 acres and other media were using 76 acres.

At that point, Feldman responded: "Please use 76. There's some technical debate internally, but 76 is in use far and wide and it's not inaccurate."

Okey dokey again. But then I noticed recently that the press was using 67 acres and the signage at the condo-sales kiosk for CityCenter at the Mirage said 67 acres, too. So today I asked again. Feldman's response: "Acreage: 67 acres."

Well, where'd the other 9 acres go?

"I believe some land was transferred to Monte Carlo for a parking garage."

Must be some parking garage at 9 acres. I pressed Feldman to explain further and he said he didn't have the time. I suggested holding off on this post until tomorrow if it would make a difference. He said it would not.

So there you have it. Make of that what you will. What I make of it is that numbers are very loosey goosey in this project so critical to the welfare of Nevada that U.S. senators need to get involved in to saving it even as MGM Mirage also insists it is totally capable of paying to finish construction so chill out, Mr. Dubai Dudes and Mr. Wall Street Dudes.

No wonder, then, Dubai is so uncomfortable. None of the numbers MGM Mirage provide ever come with comprehensive explanations. The 10,000 employees that CityCenter will hire? Who knows if that's a real figure, either?

R-J Finally Realizes Its Own Scoop! Well, Sorta.

[UPDATE, 7 a.m. PT, 3/24: The Sun's Lisa Mascaro has a piece in today's newspaper that fails to acknowledge the origin of this controversy, the R-J column by Howard Stutz. That, too, is inappropriate. If it had originated from the AP or Politico or the LA Times, she absolutely would have. Print media for far too long have been incapable of acknowledging their competitors' roles in how fast-moving news breaks. It's one reason the print media's credibility is losing ground to the Web, where even news-gathering bloggers almost always link to one other's work. -sf]

Sigh.

So here I am, getting MGM and the Sen. Reid on the record deciphering the tale that was merely hinted at in Howard Stutz's Review-Journal column yesterday. And between Jon Ralston and me, we bring it out that the Senate Majority Leader did, in fact, call banks on MGM Mirage's behalf to try to finance the rest of CityCenter.

The world starts to take notice. The Los Angeles Times and Politico.Com both write about it, crediting Ralston and/or me.

And finally, FOUR hours after I break this news here, along comes the R-J not just declaring this "Breaking News" but also pretending as though nobody else had done any journalism in the matter. Remember, of course, that I *always* provide credit for what the R-J or anyone else has come up with. If I discover I'm wrong in claiming to be first on something, I fix it with ALL-CAPS RED TYPE.

But there's the R-J, still pretending it's the only entity in the media universe. If Stutz had understood what gold he possessed, he would have called MGM and Sen. Reid's office before he even ran the allegation. So, Howard, don't go pretending that you had this awesome scoop and knew it and did all this great journalism to advance it. You get credit for mentioning the hint of the controversy first but not for realizing it was controversial or doing your due diligence as a journalist to ferret out the rest of the story.

And what's more, Stutz once again misses the news that he has. You see, by the time he wrote this it wasn't news anymore than Reid had made these calls. I'd reported that. The news he DID have was that MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., had done the same thing.

Of course, it took Ralston to fill in the details on that, getting this e-mailed remark from Feldman and blasting it out to the universe via e-mail:

Wouldn’t you also be outraged if a Senator DIDN’T stand up for the largest employer/taxpayer in his/her state and try to inquire about what issues stand in the way of financing the largest investment in US history and the largest job-creator in the nation? What Senator wouldn’t do that? Our two certainly did. There were public hearings on what the banks were doing with all the bailout funds they had received and the banks all claimed they were lending money. Have you seen any? We haven’t. As the nation experiences an unprecedented credit freeze on Wall Street, a politician calling on a bank to get funds moving again seems the right and appropriate action, not something deserving of scorn.

If I sound angry, this time I am. Normally, I comment on the R-J's shortcomings with a certain amount of humor and in the hopes that someone over there might once in a while take a suggestion or realize a mistake. This time it's personal. Stutz and his editors are absolutely aware of how badly they've stumbled on this story and they want to pretend they didn't, that they were on it the whole time and that that those shitty little pajama-clad blogger assholes don't exist. And yet, if we didn't exist, Stutz still would have no clue what he overlooked.

Spokesman: Reid Did Try To Help MGM With Banks

The Review-Journal yesterday published an allegation by an unnamed gaming analyst that Sen. Harry Reid was calling banks on behalf of MGM Mirage and asking them to give the casino giant $1.2 billion in loans for it to complete the $9.1 billion CityCenter development on the Strip. Yesterday, MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman denied this to VegasHappensHere.Com.

Today, though, I received a somewhat more complicated response from Sen. Reid's spokesman, Jon Summers. Here's the statement:

"The Review-Journal's characterization is inaccurate. Senator Reid has simply been asking banks to take a fair look at MGM’s CityCenter project to ensure that sound banking analysis is driving credit decisions, not irrational temerity over what is sometimes portrayed as a controversial industry. As we have seen on a national level, the lack of credit flow has created a hardship for a number of businesses and industries, including in Nevada. At a time when the state’s unemployment rate is higher than 10 percent, it makes sense that Senator Reid would take appropriate steps to try to help Nevada’s biggest employer complete the state’s biggest new project. With 10,000 current jobs and more than 50,000 direct and indirect future jobs on the line, Nevadans would expect nothing less."

OK. So then Sen. Reid DID ask the banks to examine this specific project? Via AIM, I asked Summers to clarify:

VegasHappensHere: Your statement does not deny that Reid has called banks on MGM Mirage's behalf.
Summers: Right, but he has not been raising money.
VegasHappensHere: I'm trying to decipher the difference. Reid has called banks and said, say, "Hey, please take an honest look at whether this is a good company and project to loan money to? Don't just say no out of hand?" Something like that?
Summers: Exactly. He wanted to make sure that a potential loan would be given serious consideration. The loss of this many more jobs would be devastating.
VegasHappensHere: Do you think making such a call would make the banks feel pressured because it's coming from Sen. Reid?
Summers: Again, he didn't call and say, "Loan them this money." He wanted to make sure that the company got a fair review. Those are two different things. Do we all hope that a fair review would result in an outcome that would preserve the jobs? Yes. But there is still a difference.

The thing I wonder is, if I'm a bank and Sen. Reid is on the line saying, "Take a REALLY good look at this one," do I feel implicit pressure? Is there any way for Sen. Reid to be involved in such an effort and not have the weight of his position come to bear? Are other senators calling banks with similar requests for companies and projects in their states?

Sen. Reid calling banks for MGM Mirage?

Just one article into this morning's Review-Journal, already I'm struck by something that seems like it could be an enormous scandal and right-wing outrage if true. But I wonder if it is because R-J gaming reporter Howard Stutz buried it so deep in his column that either he doesn't see the implications or he's not all that confident about his anonymous source.

Stutz's column is mainly about what Kirk Kerkorian is up to now that his company is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or worse. After MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren says point-blank that Kerkorian is not involved in negotiations with lenders, here's the passage that grabbed me by hte collar:

One gaming analyst said Kerkorian and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a close friend, have been calling financial institutions to try and raise the remaining $1.2 billion needed to complete the $9.1 billion CityCenter development.

Um, wow. The nation's most powerful legislator is ringing up investment houses big enough to pony up $1.2 billion and pleading with them to save a massive Strip casino development? Really? Does that sound sane to you? Sure, Reid has to be worried about what an MGM default could do to the rest of the already-tattered Nevada economy, but he's also in the throes of attacking the same institutions for the risky, lousy investments that led the nation to this precipice. And he's already taking some heat for possibly sheltering AIG prior to the bonuses scandal. Such phone calls would seem to be laden in all sorts of ethical and political minefields.

I just had this text-message exchange with MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman.

VegasHappensHere: Howard Stutz reports today that Reid has been calling banks for MGM trying to help get you loans for CityCenter. Is that possibly true?

Feldman: Not the way Howard wrote it. We (and hundreds of other businesses arond the country) have tried to use any possibly avenue to get banks lending again, including asking politicians to weigh in. They're not being asked to involve themselves in any of the detail, just to emphasize the larger public interests at play in making loans and getting the flow of credit started. This is very similar to the dialogue on Capital Hill in House and Senate banking committee hearings."

VegasHappensHere: So do you know of an instance where Reid has called a bank to ask them to give MGM or any other gaming company a loan?

Feldman: No.

I'm waiting to hear back from Sen. Reid's office as well. But such a claim is so incendiary and controversial that I'm a bit surprised the newspaper would run with it if Stutz didn't have at least a few sources claiming the same thing. Still, he clearly states it's the speculation of "one gaming analyst" who is granted anonymity. So it's either true and a huge scandal or it's irresponsible journalism.

Your Ad Here!!!

No, not here. Well, yeah, you can buy space on this evidently quite popular Vegas blog.

But today I spotted something I hoped and prayed was not what I thought it was. But then it turned out to be exactly what I thought it was. Take a look:


The Luxor, which has already sold their Strip/McCarran-facing side to Absolut vodka for a while in addition to promoting its own entertainment attractions, is now turning the ENTIRE pyramid into billboard space. Here's a closer look at what's there right now:


It's a viewfinder with the Welcome to Las Vegas sign in the middle. In other words, a placeholder. The gigantic equivalent of "YOUR AD HERE." Why not just write that? What, too tacky?

I quizzed Alan Feldman, the MGM Mirage spokesman, about this today. He was probably overwhelmed with media calls about the company's troubling fourth quarter loss -- and here's hoping he schooled some local reporters on what a "going concern" is before they get it wrong again -- but he replied via text message that, indeed, "all four sides are available." He also took the time to email me an article from the most recent MGM Mirage employee newsletter.

The article addresses both what's going on here and why they've decided to be abstract in the least subtle advertising format ever invented. I thought it might be interesting, so here it is:

Hard To Miss
The  “buzz” on the new exterior graphic at Luxor

LUXOR – They seemed to appear overnight. Giant images of a camcorder viewfinder trained on the famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign materialized late last week on two sides of the Luxor hotel. Drivers on both the I-15 and Las Vegas Boulevard no doubt noticed them. But did they understand them? Probably not, said Brad Goldberg, Vice President of Marketing at Luxor. And that’s ok. “It’s really designed to generate interest to potential advertisers and hopefully do more promotions on the exterior of the building,” Mr. Goldberg said. “The idea was, ‘Let’s make it thought-provoking and see what kind of interest we can generate.’” The camcorder graphics are a new promotion and partnership between Luxor and Skytag, an outdoor advertising firm that specializes in exterior building advertising. It’s the same company that did the LOVE Cirque du Soleil ads atop The Mirage and the Criss Angel ad currently on the front of Luxor. Tentative plans call for the images to be up for at least a month, perhaps longer. Stretching more than 20 stories high, they cover the south and west sides of the pyramid, which is largely new territory for advertisements, Mr. Goldberg said. “We’ve had a few images on the south side of the building before. We’ve never done anything on the west side. I’m hoping it will generate some additional interest on that side of the building,” he said. “We received a few calls from ad agencies even as they were still installing this, so it’s already working.” Aside from the revenue gained by selling
exterior building space for ads, the images often generate a lot of media attention. An outdoor ad for the NBA All-Star game a few years ago landed Luxor on the front page of the New York Times, Mr. Goldberg said. The hope is that these new graphics will garner similar coverage. “Our hotel is truly an iconic building in Las Vegas. Putting these images on that icon should certainly
attract some attention,” Mr. Goldberg said. “We’ll see what kind of buzz it generates."

I expressed surprise that the company would sell ads for things unrelated to anything going on inside the resort. That is, almost all wraps in Vegas to date have at least pimped out the building for a show or event occurring there. Feldman reminded me that the Luxor had done this before, and I remembered that, yes, they'd taken Absolut's money for this:


Feldman also noted that the Rio does it, too. It's true that the Rio did this...


...a couple years ago. But after that, Harrah's Vice President for Marketing Michael Weaver told me the company had decided never to do it again. "The signature shape and look of the building is part of the Rio's brand," Weaver said. "We feel we lose something if we do it too often and for products that don't belong to us." Thus, I believe they've wrapped largely with Penn & Teller stuff ever since. Not the best decision, but at least it's a boundary.

I suppose it's all just business and those of us who think it defaces the iconic nature of the buildings ought to mind our own business. But I wonder if the reason this irks me isn't just that they've turned this fabulous structure into huge billboards but rather that they turned them into EMPTY billboards. They can't even find advertisers in private? They can't just get the word out there quietly in the Madison Avenue world that the space facing the highway can be rented? They have to actually point out that there's nothing there yet?

And what if they can't rent it? What if it goes months and months without something up there, just like billboards in blighted neighborhoods do? Then it's just another vacancy, another emblem of Las Vegas' ongoing, disastrous slump. Forget quiet casino floors, closing showrooms and unsold condos. Hell, every time you pass that building by and there's no ad up, it will scream failure in a way that those others can barely approach. It's telling the world on the largest available canvas just deep in the shitter this town has sunken.

How Much Does CityCenter Cost? Nobody Seems To Know

You might recall a while back I puzzled over the size of CityCenter. Is it 67 acres? 66? 76? MGM Mirage settled that with a statement that they were going with 76 acres and since they get to draw the boundaries on their own property, 76 it is. Has a patriotic ring to it, too.

But how much is CityCenter costing? Several reports yesterday about the shorning and delaying of The Harmon now-not-condo project used a variety of figures.

A little history. Project CityCenter started out at $5 billion, way back when it was first announced in September 2005. It became $6 billion by February 2006 when they added another 1,000 condo units, mainly because Vdara grew larger. About a week later, it became $7 billion when some infrastructure costs were added in. By earlier this year, the highly credible Bloomberg News started using $11.2 billion. It's also a figure I've used. Yesterday, Robin Leach decided it's $13 billion, a figure nobody has ever officially suggested. In fact, the link at the end of Robin's post is to a Las Vegas Sun story that uses $9.2 billion.

It's not just journalistic confusion, though. Nobody actually knows for sure. Here's an emailed statement I got from MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman this morning: "The safest apples-to-apples would be our previously stated $9.2b less the just announced $600m in savings."

Uh, OK. So now it's officially $8.6 billion?

I called Feldman. Yes, $8.6 billion is now the official number. But what does he mean, apples-to-apples?

"The reason why you have big differences is like $9 billion and $11 billion is because the $11 billion includes things that the $9 billion never included. Bloomberg uses $11 billion because at one point that appeared in a filing because there was a valuation placed on land. It was speaking about the value of the project, not the cost of the project."

In other words, that 76 acres is seen to be worth about $2 billion. That makes sense in 2007 or early 2008, anyhow, after the Elad fools paid $1.2 billion for the Frontier's 35 acres in a less desirable location. It's probably come down since then but is academic anyway because nobody's selling the land under CityCenter. Yet, anyway.

Feldman went on: "This is a number that you need to understand is moving. We continue to bid stuff, we continue to get new pricing. We talk about these numbers as if they're fixed but they're really not."

Understood. But $13 billion?

"I have no idea where Robin got that number. Respectfully, I've never heard it."

Keep in mind, Robin was the guy who pegged the Treasure Island sale before anyone. So maybe he knows something.

Rumor Patrol: MGM Mirage

I got MGM Mirage VP Alan Feldman on the line today for this AFP piece on the start of hiring of the 12,000 or so employees for CityCenter. As usual, some interesting stuff didn't make it into the story.

I happened to be calling Alan after buzz on the Web had reached a fever pitch that (a) the company was this/close or even done with a deal to sell off the Mirage resort, (b) the Light Group has been pushed out of management of the Harmon hotel-condo and (c) plans are afoot to halt construction on some portion of CityCenter, most likely the aforementioned Harmon.

It seemed worthwhile in that cacophony to publish Feldman's direct responses to those issues.
(a) Mirage: After reiterating that as a publicly traded company that must seriously consider any serious offer to buy any of its assets, I asked if there was any credible offer now pending on this or any of the MGM Mirage properties. His careful, inconclusive response: "There is nothing of which I am aware." That said, he also made light fun of my question as well as that of "one of your colleagues from the local newspapers who called me breathless about the sale of the Mirage. And I asked him, 'Did you get the press release?' And he said, 'No, I didn't get a press release!' And I said, 'That's because there is none.' "

(b) The Light Group and The Harmon: On this, a bit more of a solid denial. "Nothing has changed. The Light Group is the managing entity of the Harmon. There’s been no discussion otherwise on the part of the company."

(c) A CityCenter Delay: "When Boyd made a decision to put a hold on Echelon, that gave everyone pause. Obviously we’re paying very close attention to what’s going on. We’ve also had to deal with structural issues. Some rebar had to be redone at the Harmon. That’s probably added to the rumor mill. We’re going to be make certain that CityCenter is the best it possibly can be when it opens. To the extent that any other decisions are made, we’ll make them and let you know in due course."

Oh, one more thing. On the condo front, there are about 2,400 condos for sale at CityCenter. About half are reserved with 20 percent non-refundable deposits. They've gotten virtually no new ones reserved in the fourth quarter of 2008. So is there danger that if they don't sell more of them they won't be able to fund the rest of the construction?

"We’re not one of these companies running on such thin margins that we need to close on these units to make these projects work. We’re on pretty solid ground and this is real estate that’s not going anywhere. As Las Vegas goes, this is still beachfront property.”

Get it? Beachfront property in Vegas? He made a funny. He also provided a lot and a little bit of information at the same time. Thoughts?

Criss Angel Facade Cracks Further

Astute listener and reader David F. from Manchester, U.K. pointed out that Criss Angel Believe, just two months into its official, post-preview run, is offering 40 percent off tickets. He caught it on the LuxorLV's Twitter stream. I dug a little deeper and it seems that this discount is through 2008 and the normal prices resume after New Year's Eve.

It is absolutely without precedent for Cirque to be discounting a 10-week-old show. What happened to this being the No. 1 show or at least the No. 1 Cirque show in Vegas? Yes, they've lowered prices on several shows, including Mystere and Ka, but those are older shows. If the Criss Angel show were of the Love or O caliber, not even the worst recession would be reducing it to this. Also, the period between Xmas and New Year's is still one of the busiest times in Vegas, so it's telling that they're discounting these seats for shows in that span, eliminating the explanation that they're trying to fill seats in the traditionally slowest period prior to Christmas.

MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman had some thoughts. Admitting he's not up on occupancy for the new Luxor magic show and was not involved in the pricing for the discounted shows, he said: "I don't know what the pricing situation is for that show, but I think what's up is that we're in the midst of an all-time historic economic downturn. We're not getting the same room rates during that time, either. Even New Year's Eve, where the prices usually go up dramatically, they're not going up as much as they once did. There are New Year's Eve weekend packages that average out to less than $2o0 a night. That's unheard of."

Well, OK. And in a way, perhaps the recession is a good thing inasmuch as it may kill off bad shows faster than if there was the cushion of better days. It may be that Las Vegas CityLife, which put Angel on the cover of their annual Get Out of Town issue, could get its wish sooner than later, although the R-J's Mike Weatherford did report this week Cirque will be spending the next few months working on a "fixation" plan.

On the upshot, though, Angel has surged a little in TicketNews.Com's weekly Vegas show rankings. He'd actually fallen off the list and sat behind such hot tickets as Jubilee! since the Oct. 31 opening and subsequent critical savaging.

Looking at the list on that site -- and I have been week after week -- all I can say is that it must be nice to be the Colosseum. Bette, Cher and Elton are perennials atop this list.

BREAKING: Ladies Nights Doomed?

I just broke this news for The New York Times about the Nevada Equal Rights Commission finding that gender-based pricing violates Nevada statutes. It's an open question whether it's enforceable and I've also posted an analysis at the Las Vegas Weekly's site on that side of the matter. Plus, we'll discuss this on the podcast tonight as well quite a bit, so grab that show when it's up on Thursday.

I find the whole topic fascinating and encourage you to chime on on whether Strip attractions ought to be allowed to charge women less than men for the same services. You can read NERC's ruling -- love the part about women's body parts falling out -- by clicking here.

MGM Mirage, which owns three topless pools and hosts a few nightclubs with gender-based prices, disagreed with NERC. Here's what Alan Feldman, MGM Mirage veep, wrote me in a statement:

*We believe that the longstanding practice of many Nevada hospitality industries
to charge different entry/cover charges to men and women continues to be lawful.

*The state's public accommodation statute does not prohibit different cover
charges on the basis of gender, and never intended to prohibit such practices as
"ladies nights."

*Taken to its logical conclusion, NERC's decision calls into question such
practices as charging different prices for seniors or children at movies or
attractions such as museums or amusement parks. It might also apply to charges
for services such as haircuts and dry cleaning. Also, based on NERC's reasoning,
it is unclear whether a movie theatre would be permitted from prohibiting a
minor from entering an R-rated movie unaccompanied by an adult.

*While we are continuing to review the Nevada Equal Right Commission's position
in the Las Vegas Athletic Club matter, at this time we do not intend to change
our cover charge practices.

The Ire of Unsatisfied Customers

(UPDATE, 7/14, 11:52 a.m. PT: Suzanne wrote in me this last night: "I just got off the phone with the MGM and although they didn't honor the rate they did offer me a decent rate (lower than my original booking) plus enough in comps to make up the difference. The gentleman that I spoke with was very understanding and seemed to be genuinely sorry for the troubles even though it certainly was not his fault (I'm sure this weekend has been no picnic for him either). He did say that he will also extend the offer to the rooms that my friends had booked which hopefully will redeem me a little bit on that front. In the end I'm still going, my friends are still going and the MGM is still getting our money. I really think this whole situation could have been handled so much better but business is business. It's too bad that Harrah's didn't catch wind of this and offer up something to those who had their reservations canceled. They could have scooped 1500 reservations without even trying.)" All's well that ends well. For her, anyhow. Any similar stories out there?)

The prior post offered the official explanation for the MGMGrand.Com rate-code, uh, problem. (I like to reserve "fiasco" for things like when the entire room reservation systems for several of their hotels shuts down for days and the local media doesn't give a fig.)

I thought it would be worthwhile for those of you who think this is a trivial matter from parts of our "nation of whiners" to post tourist Suzanne Ferguson's letter to the MGM Grand. She has given me permission to do so.

Before I post her letter, though, just one thing I thought of after I posted Alan Feldman's comments. Alan made reference to one person threatening legal action. Can I just urge y'all, no matter how steamed you may be, not to do that. It's fruitless -- you're not suing over such a small matter and if you are you'll almost certainly lose and waste more money than paying the difference on the hotel room for a few days -- and it pretty much guarantees whatever efforts the reservationist is making to fix the problem or help you out will stop dead in its tracks. The minute you utter the word "lawyer," they shut down altogether and won't even continue to talk to you. You're doing yourself a disservice and, more than likely, you're lying anyway.

Suzanne didn't do that. She just told her story and it is compelling and far from trivial.


To whom it may concern:

I am one of the customers who has had their reservation canceled (received email "** Important MGM Grand Information **" ) and I am more than unhappy to say the very least. When I saw the link to this deal online, I actually called the MGM directly to see if I was eligible to book.

It took me about 15 minutes on the phone with the gentleman in reservations who went and checked with his manager and casino marketing and he was advised that yes, I could go ahead and book this rate. (I had given him the promo code that appeared and that is what he went and checked on.) His instructions to me were to book through the link and then cancel my previous reservation either online or by calling him back. He even commented that he felt horrible because he had just told the customer before me that she couldn't book it and that he should have checked into further for her, which is what he had done for me.

After speaking with him I followed his instructions and re-booked, received my confirmation immediately and then let some other friends know that they could book it as well so that they could join me in Vegas, adding 4 more people to the trip who wouldn't have come otherwise.

I was not trying to book something I was not entitled to. As a consumer I did everything right by calling and confirming my eligibility for this promotion and all I have gotten from the MGM is a canceled weekend, a story about the website being hacked -- which raises some other serious issues of either security breaches or the MGM out right lying to it's customers -- and some annoyed friends who have now booked their flights and have nowhere to stay.

I would like to give MGM the opportunity to make this right by honoring my reservation and salvaging me as a current and future customer. I did absolutely nothing wrong by completing this reservation and would like to see that the MGM will do the right thing, take responsibility for their own error and prove to me that I am indeed a "Valued Guest."

Sincerely,
Suzanne Ferguson

We'll see...

MGMGrand.Com Not Hacked, But...

OK. For what it's worth, I got the scoop on the $69-a-night rates at the MGM Grand that "several hundred" people tried to enjoy. See here for the background. I'm not sure how satisfied y'all will be about it, but here's the deal, per Alan Feldman, senior VP for MGM Mirage.

First off and perhaps most importantly, the site was not hacked or breached. "That's either a very, very poor choice of words on a reservationist's part or someone just did not understand what happened. This had nothing to do with hacking," Feldman said. So rest assured if you were worried about identity theft or some other compromising Internet situation related to your personal data.

Then what actually did happen? According to Feldman, the MGM Mirage created the $69-a-night MGM Grand rate code for a mailer that was either about to or just went out to selected members of the company's slot club. It was "a closed-loop kind of thing," intended for a relatively specific, small group of people.

"Just prior to the mailer's arrival, someone figured out the code -- there are code phishers out there -- and we don't really know how, but someone got ahold of the code," Feldman said.

It was then circulated online. Feldman said it's difficult to figure out where it was posted first or by whom, but he said some postings indicated that whoever was passing around the information at first knew that it was intended for slot club players because those postings instructed people to go to the casino cage and sign up for a slot club card before checking in. That is, it offered a work-around.

The MGMGrand.Com folks realized the problem because the mailer hadn't actually landed yet and many who were booking under the special rate were not on the list of those who were supposed to get the mailer. The reservations have been canceled, emails are going out and some phone calls are being made. You may need to call to address it if you've been canceled.

"We discovered very quickly that people who had no connection to this code were using it," Feldman said. "The names and reservations were not matching up with who we sent it to."

Feldman said reservationists have been in contact with dozens of the hundreds who tried to use the code and that almost all have rebooked under a different rate, usually a promotional one that is just higher than $69. He said one cheap rate available to the general public is $89 a night when available and many took that.

"We'll work with every guest on a one-on-one basis," Feldman said. "Of those we've gotten to in the first 24 hours, only a few went elsewhere, I'd say in the single digits. One person was upset enough to say 'I'm going to call a lawyer.' Everyone else understood that the code they used was one that they did not have the authority to use."

I did ask Feldman why the company did not feel obliged to honor the rate for those who booked and he said that it was a special offer for a select group of people and not an error in a general mailer or something for all comers.

Any thoughts?

Serve Us Up Some Fresh ARIA!

This is why you read this blog.

Way, way back on December 17, you read here the first inkling that the central 4,000-room hotel-casino of CityCenter might come to be known as ARIA. At the time, MGM Mirage Chief of Design and Construction Bobby Baldwin disclosed to me that it was a name the brass loved but that they couldn't wrestle free the trademarks.

Evidently, that logjam was broken sometime in the past seven weeks. As recently as late March, MGM Mirage Chairman and CEO Terry Lanni told me in an interview for The New York Times that we aired on "The Strip" on April 17 that naming the hotel was "one of the most frustrating things" he'd dealt with in his career.

I guess in the three weeks between when I spoke to Lanni and when we posted that interview, the matter was resolved. It's not unprecedented; Steve Wynn bought the name "Mirage" from more than one proprietor in Vegas including from what then became known as the Glass Pool Inn.

As the screenshot of the trademark filing above shows, they got their wish on April 11. Some further digging showed that as of April 15, MGM Mirage took ownership of the Internet domain name AriaVegas.com and AriaLV.Com. On May 1, they grabbed AriaHotelCasino.Com. I spoke today with the owner of AriaLasVegas.com, a Las Vegas man who bought the domain on Sept. 29, 2007. That's pretty prescient timing. He wouldn't discuss it his negotiations right now or how he might have known that it was a name under consideration.

I don't know if that logo above is in any way related to the resort's logo. I doubt it.

I asked Alan Feldman, the MGM spokesman, about the process. Why Aria?

"Interestingly enough, Aria was one of those names that came up early in the process. For a little while, we were focused on creating a new name, a new word. But the thing about Aria was, we kept coming back to it."

Like anything else in Vegas, it'll take some getting used to but is certainly workable. Remember how we scratched our heads at "Love"? Now it fits. Or THEhotel? Oh, wait. That one's still stupid.

My favorite Vegas name? Zumanity. I don't even like the show. I just like the name. What's yours?