*** OFFICIAL *** Las Vegas news and rumors thread
Here's what I have for you right now:
The Monte Carlo will be rebranding and renovating soon. It opened in 1996, but is badly showing its age. MGM, its owner, has been forced to sell its rooms cheaply, actually making this property a good value if you want to stay center strip and don't want a complete dump. But this isn't a good hotel, and it looks more than its 19 years of age. In addition, similar to boris78, the Monte Carlo has no theme, except perhaps Soviet-era homoeroticism. Actually, it doesn't even have that. There's no "draw" to the Monte Carlo for outsiders. Excalibur is a castle, New York New York is a small model of New York City, Bellagio is a high-end luxury property, MGM Grand is a mega-resort.... but Monte Carlo is... well, nothing. Nobody ever sees the Monte Carlo as a destination.
Rather than continue to give away the rooms at a bargain, they will renovate the hotel and rebrand it to something more interesting.
I stayed there briefly in 2013, and was shocked to see that my room had no wireless internet.
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The SLS is losing money at an alarming rate.
The SLS is the former Sahara. The Sahara existed from 1952 until 2011. Once considered a prime location, the Sahara's area had degraded and was not close to either the strip or downtown, making it nonviable. Rather than destroying the building, the property was sold and reopened as SLS in 2013. A staggering $416 million was put into renovating the property into what was supposed to be a high-end hotel.
I never understood this. Nobody was going to pay a lot of money to stay in a hotel at that location, no matter how nice it was.
Indeed, it struggled to fill rooms, and got about zero foot traffic.
Sam Nazarian, CEO of SBE Entertainment, was the face of the SLS, helped transform it from the Sahara, and his company managed the property. He also owned 10%. It was announced last week that Nazarian is selling his 10% share, and will no longer be managing the SLS.
This project had fail written all over it from the start, and indeed it is living up to everyone's predictions.
