Are you also concerned that the CEO of Viagra manufacturer Pfizer might not suffer from erectile dysfunction?

Which is probably why no one jumped on the idea of a Poker-Only Hotel Casino, not even the failed/closed Lucky Dragon casino.

Drain the Strip, give management back to the real gamblers !!! Folks who "get" the concept of a poker-only hotel casino.

If I had a choice I'd rather hire a CEO who had ED, he'd have a much better understanding of the product and the customers.

Strange that an alleged poker player like yourself is so obsessed with bad mouthing the idea of a poker themed hotel that came from a thread that ended months ago. OK, we get it, you, a poker player, are strongly against a poker themed hotel. Now let's get back to this thread.

It kinda makes me wonder how many resources are actually put into casino - particularly Las Vegas - research.

You'd think the scale of Vegas would necessitate almost daily manipulation of machines/locations/denominations/staffing/etc. Especially when compared to other companies of similar scales thar have several specialists and subject matter experts.

Bad example - Pfizer CEO is 65 yo dude. He has ED.

This adequately highlights why CEOs look down on the general public.

Viagra isn't a top seller for Pfizer. I will admit that I didn't even think it was in the top 10, but I was wrong, it's 7th. Lipitor (cholesterol/heart) is above it. Enbrel (arthritis) is above it. Lyrica (neuropathic pain) is above it. There's also a pneumococcal vaccine above it (which admittedly surprised me) and some cancer stuff (which actually surprised me, in how little there was).

Expecting a CEO to have survived a heart attack just so he/she "understands the product" is pretty lol. Not even their salespeople understand the products they are pushing - they have to work off tightly regulated scripts (or face the wrath of the FDA).

It's way more important for a CEO to understand finance and operations.

Some of the criticisms of hotel-casino CEOs, like cutting maintenance, are valid. I'd probably add acquiring way too much debt to finance construction projects when it's clear the lifetime of the building will exceed the lifetime of the business plan. But the idea that hotel-casinos should keep shoveling money into the casino side is lol. It's become pretty clear that poker is at the bottom of the totem pole, below table games, below slots, below retail, below restaurants, below clubs, below everything. At some point someone's going to run the numbers and decide to close a poker room and turn it into an art gallery.

I hate it as much as anyone else, but if you're one of the few who get the survey and waste it ranting about poker rooms and resort fees, damn you.

If I got one and I had to put a criticism listed in this thread, I'd choose "I used to feel special when I visited Vegas, now I feel like a number." That's both true and helpful.

Do you see any reason why a casino operator should be run differently than another business of comparable size?

Not saying that’s good or bad, but I think casinos in Vegas have a significantly higher percentage of people in (middle) management that were promoted from within. I don’t have any numbers but a friend who runs an IT staffing agency does work for one of the big casino operators and told me it’s hard to recruit IT talent to LV because people don’t want to move there and some even say they don’t want to have anything gambling related on their resume. I highly doubt another company (except maybe for something very religious) would really care if you worked for MGM or Caesars in the past, but maybe I am wrong.

That's like saying a dead guy has low blood pressure. He's past breeding age and no longer requires boaners.

A lot of people don't like gambling. It would be on par with adult bookstores or liquor stores or tattoo parlors.

Like you could have been a warehouse logistics manager at a factory and never even seen inside the boxes, but you're still going to get a ton of (negative) questions and assumptions about your resume if you list Callipygian's Giant Dildo Emporium as a previous employer.

I once hired a product manager for my cloud software company (backup/recovery service and completely vanilla) who had been a product manager for Friend Finder Networks. Yes, Adult Friend Finder, a major hookup site. It also ran a bunch of live porn modeling sites and in his last job he was the product manager for the service that lets viewers control the model's toys.

Needless to say, his interview was one of the most interesting I've ever conducted. He was also the best product manager I've ever hired.

Did Callipygian's letter of reference help him get the job?

Reminds me of how women always argue the exception to make a point. Exceptions are cool, aren't they?

Agree with TxGuy's points. From most ppl I talk to, the majority still have the "Vegas is so cheap" mindset which probably hasn't been the case since the late 90's. Last year my wife, who's never been to Vegas, wanted to make a last-min trip for a long weekend. When I told her it'd likely cost us somewhere close to $2,000 for a Thurs-Sun stay (airfare, hotel, food, etc.) before factoring in gambling money, she didn't believe it'd be anywhere close to that. Go so infrequently now I've lost all comps, so when I started showing her the room alone would run close to $300-350/night at somewhere nicer (Aria, Wynn, etc.), she quickly understood.

I think regional gaming is definitely making a dent in overall Vegas traffic at this point. Aside from super conservative areas, I can't think of many places in the US where you're more than an hour or two from legalized gambling (either full-on casino or a poker room). Most of this is all within the past 20 years or so. Before your options were basically Vegas, AC or Tunica. Now casinos are all over the place. I'll be the first to admit there's NOTHING like Vegas for all the glitz & glamour and excess, but if I just want to go play poker or craps, I can drive an hour into the mountains here in CO and get my fix.

As an aside, would now be a good time to admit I also worked at Friend Finder? haha

[QUOTE=callipygian;54339647]A lot of people don't like gambling. It would be on par with adult bookstores or liquor stores or tattoo parlors.

YMMV though. I was told (after the fact) that a significant reason for me getting admitted to med school (in Illinois long before they had gambling) was that my job as a gaming manager was "interesting".... made my application stand out from the usual.

MM MD

Just a related story. No point being made.

IME it's the exact opposite: women use a specific alleged transgression under discussion to generalize about how everything you have ever done is bad.

Regarding the drop in convention revenue, could convention attendance and staffing be down because of the removal of the business expense deduction for meals and entertainment with clients?

You charge people to park after they lose their money and wonder why they go to the Venetian? LOL

Something tells me once the recession hits (and there will be one... probably in 2019) Vegas is going to hurt real bad

Have been 22 times between 2003-2017 and I am not surprised that Vegas is struggling. It has changed so much even in that time period and basically none of it is for the better. My wife and I have no plans to go again and we were fairly heavy gamblers making diamond every year without really exploiting any of the loopholes/bonuses. My take on it is:

1)Price. My last trip was March Madness 2017. I got my room/resort fee comped but my friends did not. I think I was able to get them 1 of the 4 nights that they stayed at Paris comped but their total hotel bill was still almost $800. Add in a couple plane tickets and ya you are looking at $2k with no comps for essentially a weekend. How do you justify that when there is a big world out there full of real adventure and way cheaper? My wife and I just went to Portugal for 2 weeks and ate every meal out, drank multiple bottles of wine a day and spent around $4k total including air. It would be hard to do a vegas weekend for that. They just can't compete with the other values on price at all anymore and it's not close.

2)The Strip has changed. My first vegas trip was 2003. I was a broke college student and I think took maybe $800 which was basically all the money to my name and that was my entire budget post air/hotel. We stayed at Monte Carlo and went to the Boardwalk next door a ton to play $2 bj and drink their terrible mixed drinks. At that time there were lots of places along the strip like this that were refuges from the insane pricing. Somehow, to me, this was part of the charm. I remember in 2006 on a WSOP trip a bunch of my buddies who were broke went with me. We stayed at MGM but spent a ton of time at Trop next door largely because you could drink like a king at their bar playing .25 bj. They also had a wheel you could spin once a day to win free play (my friends tried to spin it as many times a day as they could). The current strip doesn't have any of this anymore. It is mostly the same from end to end. The same boring restaurants, bars, etc. The charm and individuality of the place is gone. Back in the day we would casino crawl quite frequently. The incentive to do this is gone. Even the shows are the same tired **** from place to place. A washup musician, a cirque show, etc. There is zero creativity there really.

3)Comps are much worse. Stuff like TR changing Diamond from 15,000 to 25,000 with no warning (at least to get into DL) is very offputting. Even though I had the points for last year I was still pretty pissed about this.

4)As has been said casinos are everywhere. Vegas does still have the advantage for things like March Madness over pretty much anywhere but outside of that why would you go to vegas to gamble?

5)Nickel and Diming. You guys have beat this to death but it does get tiresome.

I honestly think Vegas in it's current incarnation is doomed. Maybe not in the next few years but eventually if they don't make significant changes. Having basically 3 corps run the whole strip is my guess on what the culprit is. It makes everything a clone of everything else and has been a huge negative.

If you stay at a 4 or 5 star hotel in Lisboa / Portugal, you also pay $200+/night.

Hotel rooms might be the only thing that's not overpriced in LV yet. They feel super expensive because they were highly subsidized for ages but in reality they are still pretty cheap compared to high end hotels/resorts in other cities.

Obviously not everyone wants to stay at one of those 4+ star resorts and lots of people would prefer a low cost option like the old Imperial Palace instead, but that's a totally different issue.

Your portugal pricing isnt accurate. We did AirBNB but I put some random dates in on hotwire for later this month in Lisbon and 4star was 94, 5 star 105. Now i am sure there are some super high end hotels that are much more. But the standard rooms even at the high end properties in vegas dont qualify as 5 star experiences imo. Also your estimates for vegas room rates are way off. Random weekend rates where nothing is going on even at mid tier properties like PH are fairly high. This weekend for 2 nights in the cheapest room there is 192/night plus resort fee and tax.

If some smart financial person could tell me how much I would have in my 401k if I would have invested all the money I've lost gambling, drinking, flying/traveling, hoteling, eating out, banging hookers, doing blow, etc. since 1980, I would pay them $100.

About tree fiddy.

Yep, the lisbon 200$+ is way off, you just need to do a quick kayak search to confirm, even if you narrow in to a central location and excellent rating. Usually (outside of big fairs and similar peak times) you can get a very decent 4star almost anywhere in Europe for under $100/nt if you shop around a little bit. Except for Switzerland and London and maybe a small number of other places


jcorb yep if you never live before you retire I'm sure you can get a lot into your 401k