VEGAS INC Magazine - Latest Las Vegas business news, features and commentaries about gaming, tourism, real estate and more
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In business tourism downtown las vegas resort teams up with global brand By Ed Komenda staff writer The D Las Vegas has teamed up with a new hotel chain. The downtown casino this month announced a partnership with Floridabased Lexington by Vantage. Lexington will take over 636 recently remodeled rooms at the D. The Fre- mont Street haunt — formerly known as Fitzgeralds — got a major face-lift after Derek and Greg Stevens bought the property and reopened it in October. The partnership allows the D to keep its name and independence. But the D will now have access to the resources of Vantage Hospitality, Lexington's parent company, which owns more than 1,000 hotels worldwide. "The D's strategic agreement with Lexington Legacy extends each brand's reach into markets where they currently do not have a presence," the D's corporate operations officer, Dave Tuttle, said in a statement. The agreement marks the second such partnership between an independent resort and a major hotel collection. The Las Vegas Hotel in February signed a licensing agreement Red Lion Hotels Corp., giving it access to the company's reservation database and customer loyalty program. las vegas is 'extraordinarily dependent' on national, international economies murren, From page 7 afford higher taxes. How do you reconcile the two? I don't think there's any inconsistency there. Our stock used to be $100 a share, and that was only four years ago. We used to make more than $2 billion in cash flow in this market alone, and we're down profoundly from that. It's a hole that was so incredibly deep, most people didn't think anyone would be able to claw its way out of it. We laid off thousands of people. It was the most punishing, damaging, demoralizing, painful time of 14 20130527_VI07_F.indd 14 Las Vegas' history and certainly mine. We have started to improve. We had a better-than-expected first quarter, but we were only marginally profitable. We made just a penny a share. What we always have to think about, particularly in Las Vegas, is that we are extraordinarily dependent on national and international economies – more than we've ever been before in the history of this town. It's a place where gamblers would come, and it was more recession resistant. We've learned the hard way how dependent we are on the economy. I don't know exactly what Mr. (Steve) Wynn said when he visited with lawmakers, but I can say it has been tough in every segment. Circus Circus used to make $80 million to $90 million a year in cash flow, and it will be lucky to make $25 million this year. MGM Grand made over $400 million a few years ago; it'll maybe make half that. Bellagio made $450 million, and we won't come anywhere close to that — and it's our best property in the market. Aria, at CityCenter, with billions of dollars invested, has only recently begun posting strong results. What's happening with MGM's interactive gaming strategy? We have been working closely with our partners, bWin Party and Boyd Gaming. We were one of the early entrants into the licensing process in our state. We are working with our partners in every state that is contemplating online gaming at this time. We have been working on our software systems, our hardware systems and our marketing. We have people in our company dedicated solely to that effort. ... We have not yet determined when the roll-out date would be. | 2 7 M AY 2 0 1 3 | 5/23/13 2:26:06 PM