Friday, May 27, 2005
Hooters Leaders Lay Odds Theme A Winner In Vegas
By MICHAEL SASSO
Published: May 27, 2005
LAS VEGAS - Beautiful women in tank tops and tight-fitting shorts can sell truckloads of beer and chicken wings. But will they attract affluent gamblers to a Las Vegas casino?
Several founders of the Hooters restaurant chain, which began in Clearwater, are betting that they can by constructing the new Hooters Casino Hotel here.
This week, an investment group that includes the Hooters founders were doing some early site work on their $130 million casino project. They are redeveloping the 700-room Hotel San Remo, which is a relatively small casino/hotel just off the Las Vegas Strip, into a Hooters-brand resort. The projected opening is in February.
Hooters' ``delightfully tacky, yet unrefined'' atmosphere will be ever-present. As many as 300 Hooters girls, adorned in their trademark tight shirts and skimpy shorts, will serve up wings in the resort's Hooters restaurant and hand out cocktails on the casino floor. At least a few will even deal blackjack or other table games, marketing director Richard Langlois said.
Among the resort's nine bars and restaurants will be a Dan Marino's Fine Food & Spirits and a Pete & Shorty's Tavern.
The Hooters Casino Hotel will be modest in scale by Las Vegas standards. The massive 5,000-room MGM Grand is across the street. Just a stone's throw away are the spectacular New York-New York, with its faux New York skyline, the Luxor's shimmering black pyramid and the medieval- themed Excalibur.
The less extravagant Hooters Casino Hotel will try to re- create the comfortable sports bar feel of its restaurants. That will include installing a wood floor in the casino and, of course, women in tank tops and orange shorts throughout, Langlois said.
The resort is a partnership of three groups: four of the six original founders of Hooters; a major franchisee of the Hooters chain; and the Izumi family of Japan, which owns the Hotel San Remo, Langlois said. Although Hooters was founded in Clearwater in 1983, the founders of the company sold the Hooters brand and most of the chain's restaurants to an Atlanta company called Hooters of America several years ago.
The founders still operate a Clearwater company, Hooters Management Corp., and own a number of Hooters restaurants across the country, including in the Tampa Bay area. They also have the right to develop a Hooters-branded casino.
With its Hooters brand, the new casino will enjoy instant name recognition and will be able to do cross-promotions with Hooters restaurants nationwide, Langlois said.
For example, plans call for every Hooters restaurant to eventually have a kiosk where customers can call for reservations at the new casino/hotel. Also, people in the Chicago area will be able to fly into Las Vegas on Hooters Air, which is Hooters' small airline. Currently, Hooters Air's only direct flight into Las Vegas is from Chicago, and Langlois knew of no plans to expand with more routes at this time.
Although Hooters has name recognition, one challenge for the new casino may be in luring the right customers, namely people ages 35 to 55 with plenty of disposable income.
``If we trend too young, we may miss our revenue projections if all of a sudden we become Hard Rock 2,'' Langlois said, referring to the off-the- Strip casino known for its Generation X appeal.
One expert on the Las Vegas scene said Hooters Casino Hotel has a chance to become a hit, perhaps because it will appeal to the middle class and not the rich. Bo Bernhard, director of gambling research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' International Gaming Institute, said in recent years that Las Vegas casino developers have courted the super- rich, with fabulous casinos such as the Wynn, Bellagio and The Venetian.
However, high-rollers often are extremely demanding and force casinos to compete for them. Upscale casinos often offer high-rollers a partial refund if they lose money at the gaming tables, which is called a ``discount on loss.'' For example, Wynn Las Vegas might offer high-rollers a 15 percent refund on any gambling losses. In response, The Venetian might up the ante and offer wealthy customers a 17 percent discount on loss, Bernhard said.
Although conventional wisdom has it that high-rollers are where the money is at, Bernhard said Las Vegas actually has a long history of making lots of money off the middle class.
Bernhard said Hooters Casino Hotel becomes at least the third restaurant chain to create a Las Vegas casino. The Hard Rock Cafe chain spawned the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and other cities, including Tampa. Meanwhile, the Aladdin Resort & Casino in Las Vegas will morph into the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino by late summer 2006, according to an Aladdin spokeswoman.
