MGM Mirage Nightmare Continues!

It seemed the MGM Mirage mess was winding down yesterday and Micros CEO Tom Giannopoulos told me the system had been “substantially restored.” Micros makes the Opera Reservation System. He told me:

“It’s not a product issue, it’s directly related to the environment. We are trying to find out exactly what happened. There could be many reasons from degradation of the data to a virus that may have come into the system.”

But from what I'm hearing, today was worse than yesterday in some spots. All information had to be taken down manually from guests and double-booking rooms was frequent. That is, it's harder to know if a room being issued is already occupied, so folks are walking in on one another or the original room occupants are finding their key cards stop working.

Normally the Bellagio allows guests to check in as early as 6 a.m. if their rooms are available, but today they told everyone not to check in until 11 a.m. Then, at 11, they told everyone to wait another hour. Guests were getting extremely rankled and many have had their first nights and some meals comped to make up for it. At Bellagio, they've got servers roaming the lobby to sooth ire with trays of free bottled water and coffee; at the Mirage it's so bad they're actually taking cocktail orders!

The front desk crews are miserable, too. At Bellagio, they brought in a very elaborate espresso machine for clerks to enjoy.

The Opera system, by the by, is used by the Wynn Las Vegas and Macau as well as the Four Seasons and the international arms of Marriott, Hyatt, Intercontinental and other places.

Meanwhile, it's been five days and not a syllable on any of this in the local papers or the local TV stations with the exception of a paragraph in Norm Clarke's column in Sunday. Norm's website also linked to the coverage provided here.