Welcome to Casino Life
... and for many of you, welcome to Las Vegas.
Whether you see eye-to-eye with Victor Royer or not probably depends on your age and disposition. This month he picks up a common thread to his regular features with us – that of Las Vegas becoming a shadow of it's former self; of it becoming a convention city / car park / day club with gambling a mere add on. And to an extent I have to agree. Yes, I am of that certain age where I can remember nostalgically many of the old venues he describes – some of them in later years were very bad, but as he says they could have had their facade maintained and had new facilities behind. They've achieved it in Stratford-upon-Avon... why not Vegas? Perhaps it's because the US is so young that there's a view that there's nothing really that old to preserve? I've got a vintage car and it causes a stir wherever I drive it... people smile and generally appreciate what was – and can still exist now.
But, we can't stay rooted in the past and have to cater for the new customer... ultimately Las Vegas needs to make money; money from day clubs and conventioneers. Plus, whilst we're all sick to death of hearing that Millennials can't concentrate for more than a nanosecond and have no interest in gambling... perhaps preserving the past and offering the future in a sexier way could have got around the issue.
We start this month with an interview by veteran reporter Steve Karoul with Jim Abbas, Senior VP of Operations at Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings. Most interesting for me was the fact that in their 14 ship fleet they've made sure their casino offering is the same across all the brands – no matter how old the ship; and the emphasis on their loyalty programme.
David McKee takes a closer look at MGM – from their National Harbor project in Washington to the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and it's a very comprehensive report on the state of the company – where it is, where it's going and why.
Peter White chats to Harald Kaiblinger Managing Director 8 UnlimtedRRD Ltd (the RDD is Relentless Digital Development apparently) whilst Tim Cullimore talks about his casino consultancy and the importance of location... Carl "The Dean" Sampson offers his views on whether casinos are maximising the revenue from their poker offering and Kubilay Özer, Global Sales Director, APEX Gaming talks to Rebecca Green about how the company is expanding their gaming solutions. Finally we close by taking a closer look at some of the products that will be on show soon.
See you at G2E and yes, I'll drop by the Neon Museum on my trip to get a taste of what Vegas used to be.
Glyn Thomas
Editor in Chief
glyn@ace123.com
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