The world
THE clock always governs hotel life. But there's a great big ticking timepiece that's changing the very nature of hotels and what they do. It's the clock that tells our customers they have diminishing amounts of leisure time on their hands.
As a result, some are demanding more when they check in. They don't just want hotels that will house and feed them, they want hotels that will put on a good show, provide a bit of shopping, broaden their minds and save them time.
This coming together of hospitality, entertainment and time management has given birth to the "all-globe resort". Just as some Disney parks show all the world in one quick amusement ride, these resorts offer a variety of holiday experiences from all over the world in one location.
It's not something we've seen in the UK - yet. Attractions such as Alton Towers, Center Parcs and the Granada Studio Tours in Manchester are probably the closest we get. To see the hotel industry play up to this trend, you need to take a trip to Las Vegas. In fact, if you go there, you might just think you're somewhere else. Thanks to one new hotel, and the development plans for two more, you'll soon see the key landmarks of Europe and the USA all along the main Vegas thoroughfare, the "Strip".
Fancy a holiday in the lakes and mountains of northern Italy? Paris without the springtime weather? New York's Big Apple without the worms? They'llall soon be in Las Vegas. It's a worldof foreign holidays, but with each destination just five minutes away, English spoken as the norm, and not a drop of rain in sight.
The hotel companies are playing for big stakes here. The New York-New York hotel-casino, which opened at the start of 1997, cost about $460m (more than £280m). The development of the Paris resort is expected to burn up $750m (about £460m). And the Bellagio complex, inspired by the village of the same name overlooking Italy's Lake Como, will leave its backers $1.4b (more than £850m) out of pocket.
The gamble seems to have paid off at New York-New York. The owners estimate that around five million people have passed through the hotel in the past year. At least, that's the number they think entered New York-New York through the back door, crossing over the replica of the Brooklyn Bridge and dodging the copies of the State of Liberty and Ellis Island on the way. If that isn't enough to awaken those stereotypical memories of the city that never sleeps, then the lobby, casino, restaurant and shopping areas are variously modelled on Times Square, Chinatown, Little Italy, Broadway and Wall Street.
The 2,033 guest rooms and suites are housed in 12 New York-style skyscrapers, each about one-third the actual size of New York icons such as the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings.
As you would expect with something so over-the-top, the bosses at New York-New York are effusive in their self-praise. "We have built the greatest city in Las Vegas," says William Sherlock, president and chief executive officer.
But how were the backers - hotel company MGM Grand and casino operator Primadonna Resorts - sweet-talked into spending nearly half a billion dollars on this, especially as MGM Grand already runs the world's largest hotel-casino right across the road?
All it took was a letter. Sig Rogich, president of Rogich Communications in Las Vegas and a board member at Primadonna, says the whole thing came about when he wrote to Kirk Kerkorian, the US wheeler-dealer and three-time owner of MGM. Rogich recalls: "It didn't take muchto put it together. I wrote to him, hecalled me at home and said he was interested in a joint venture and then we got on with it."
New York, says Rogich, was the obvious choice. "We talked about Chicago and San Francisco, but New York is probably the great American icon," he says. "Las Vegas has a great many visitors from the eastern part of the USA, and this was one of those moments when we didn't need a lot of focus groups to tell us what we already knew."
But there were other, more practical, reasons behind the final choice. "We had a small piece of property, and when you're building New York, you build vertically," says Rogich. "So we built up."
The Bellagio development is much more a labour of love. Steve Wynn, chairman of hotel firm Mirage Resorts, says the original concept is his, dreamt up during a holiday in northern Italy. The resort takes what the travel books call the most beautiful town in Italy, and then copies it on to 122 acres of Vegas real estate. The geographical contrasts aren't deterring the developers. Bellagio in Italy nestles sleepily by Lake Como, so the imitation Bellagio will also have a lake, nine acres in size, just outside the front door, complete with light show and fountains. No wonder the complex has been in the making since 1989, with the grand opening now scheduled for September 1998.
All these touches help to make Bellagio the most expensive resort ever seen in Vegas. Wynn, who has been the boss at Mirage for more than two decades, insists his pockets are deep enough. He's not bluffing. US business magazine Forbes ranks Mirage Resorts as the USA's second most profitable hotel and gaming firm by number of employees, far in front of rivals such as Hilton Hotels Corporation. In 1996, Mirage was the 348th most profitable company in the Forbes 500.
The company insists it's not trying to copy the Italian lakeside town, but Wynn concedes he wants to fill the 3,000 guest rooms with US tourists who are thinking about visiting Italy, and European visitors who can't decide between a Continental holiday and an American one. The big plus will be time saving, but in this hotel, they'll pay steeply for it. Wynn is only interested in big spenders.
In real life, it's simple enough getting from Bellagio to the border of France, but if you're short of time, it's much quicker to go from the Bellagio complex in Vegas to the site of the Paris development. By comparison with Bellagio, Paris is not only cheaper, it's a bit of a rush job too. The complex was dreamt up in 1995, developer Hilton Hotels Corporation broke ground in April 1997, and the first guests should be given a Vegas bienvenue in 1999.
The haste may be due to a shortage of decent land. This is the last undeveloped prime estate on the Las Vegas Strip, and with the long-term decline in gaming in the town, the land can't be gambled away on yet another casino. A new form of fast entertainment must be coined.
So the developer, in the guise of subsidiary Bally Entertainment, has settled on a hybrid of turn-of-the-century and modern France. The resort's central feature will be a 50-storey replica of the Eiffel Tower, where guests can dine in a restaurant (French, of course) or travel up to the top floor and peer out at the Las Vegas Strip. As well as the tower, the resort will offer copies of the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysées, the Louvre, and other attractions. Hidden among all this will be 2,914 guestrooms, 85,000sq ft of casino, three restaurants and bars, and 31,000sq ft of shopping.
The owners make no bones about their objectives. "This will be a realistic version of the French city," says Arthur Goldberg, executive vice-president of Hilton Hotels Corporation. "Short of an actual trip to France, it will allow visitors to experience all the excitement and magic that Paris has to offer."
One wonders what he's going to do about the weather. Unlike Las Vegas, autumnal Paris rarely hits 102¼F in the shade. And that's the rub. No matter how hard they try, the developers can't hope to come close to the real thing. New York, for example, is attractive because of the energy and bustle of its people, rather than its beautiful buildings. Paris has sophistication and a style which, when imitated in Las Vegas, look like vulgarity. And the developers of Bellagio have stopped pretending they're building an Italian lakeside town.
But what you lose in authenticity,you gain in time, and that keeps thevisitors coming. People who mighthave been switched off by Las Vegas's roulette wheels are coming instead for a slice of foreign living that's still very familiar and can be changed for something else by walking a few yards down the street.
Some see this latest trend growing out of the history of Las Vegas. The city was created as a gambling heart pulsing in the Nevada desert, but now, says Frank Croston, hospitality partner at London-based consultant Arthur Andersen, it has had to reinvent itself as an entertainment centre: "The demand now is for urban centres mixing entertainment with complementary activities - accommodation mixed with theatre, cinema and retail. It's all about getting as much entertainment as you can on one spot and for the minimum expenditure of time."
Eventually this phenomenon will arrive on these shores. In fact, the advance guard may already be here. Croston points to the new Bass-franchised Dave and Buster's integrated restaurant/entertainment arcade in Solihull, near Birmingham, as a prototype. "This is one of the fastest growing concepts around the world," he says. "Time is so precious nowadays, the evolution that's taking place in Las Vegas is something that will increasingly happen elsewhere." n
