Although Las Vegas has rebounded a bit from its economic slump of the past couple of years, it is nowhere near the good times it enjoyed in the past. The fact that President Obama criticized the idea of vacationing in Las Vegas didn’t exactly help matters. Here is what Obama said last year:
“When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.”
This remark, as well as others from Obama, drew sharp criticism from Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman who was also a Democrat (he re-registered as a non-partisan voter in 2009):
“He’s not our friend. I don’t know about Nevada, but Las Vegas, he’s sure not our friend. He has a real psychological hang-up about the entertainment capital of the world.”
Well, mayor, I am your friend. A friend with some solid advice on how Las Vegas can “get its groove back.”
In my guise as The Coupon Whisperer, I recently checked out some Las Vegas deals in advance of possibly visiting that entertainment capital. I figured that there would be lots of great free play deals being offered by the casinos. To my great shock, all I found were chintzy $5 or $10 free play deals.
Are you kidding me? At the local casinos here in South Florida new players will usually receive at least $25 or $50 in free play, and sometimes a lot more such as $100 currently offered by the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood to cover losses of that amount. And Las Vegas can’t at least match that?
Therefore, my idea on how Las Vegas can become a booming city again is for several of the casinos to offer $100 in free play for new players. If just a few casinos make this offer, I am sure many others would follow suit for competitive reasons. Of course, it won’t really cost the casinos $100 per every new player since most of that money is usually won back by the house. In fact, I have often seen players gamble their entire free play, plus their own money, when they burn through the free play for a net gain for the casino.
Once word gets out about this $100 free play offer being provided by many of the Las Vegas casinos, visitors will once again be flocking to that city. A married couple visiting 10 casinos during their stay offering that $100 free play would be able to acquire a total of $2000 in free play between them. This is an incredible incentive to visit Las Vegas. Keep in mind that the new visitors, attracted by the free play deals, would also be spending money on food, entertainment, transportation, and other goods and services.
Best of all is that no tax payer money would be required. This would be strictly a free enterprise economic stimulus.
The ideal person to initiate such a free play program would be someone who currently owns a number of Las Vegas hotels and casinos, a person known as a visionary who spearheaded the resurgence of Las Vegas after years of decline.
Paging Steve Wynn.
