My first visit to Las Vegas was part of a family trip to the Grand Canyon. We stopped at Circus Circus for the all-you-can-eat breakfast, and I caught my first sight of a casino floor. My parents were decidedly against gambling and let me know that if I wanted to do something charitable with my money, I should not donate it to the “poor, starving casinos fund.” I never unlearned that lesson, but I like Las Vegas any way. It’s a giant, crazy, over-the-top carnival for adults. (The Parking Today’s tradeshow and exhibition is happening there in a few weeks.)
The news from Las Vegas is that MGM Resorts is going to start charging for parking at its casinos. It’s a move that David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV, says could be a “historic shift.”
Parking garages in Las Vegas are cavernous. There are thousands of thousands of stalls for tourists who never stop coming. But how are they going to feel about paying for parking after years of enjoying one of Vegas’s best perks? What will they think about a company that’s going to take their money on the tables and at the slots, but still expects them to fork out for garage time?
It sounds like MGM doesn’t have much to worry about. According to the Los Angeles Times:
What happened? To put it simply, competition disappeared. MGM owns a dozen casino hotels on the Strip, clustered at the south end around Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. Caesars Entertainment, the other mega-corporation on the Strip, owns nine, clustered around mid-Strip. Caesars has been coy about whether it will follow MGM on parking fees.
It remains to be seen how casino-goers will react to the change. If it works for MGM, it’s likely Caesars and the rest will follow suit.
Read the article here.
