Las Vegas Weekly

The shape of things to come

Anxiety hits Las Vegas Boulevard

Illustration: Colleen Wang

Five months ago, money and noise flooded our casino as usual. News back then painted a bleak outlook on the economy due to the real-estate market’s crash, but the hotel was still between 95-100 percent occupancy most nights. Any time there was a boxing match or big concert like Bocelli or Beyoncé, it was not unusual for us to hit stop-sell status, in which we turned away even our best customers. If the economy was as weak as they said, then our casino and many others were immune.

What cut our throats was the rise in gasoline prices. Weekly we saw numbers on the gas-station marquees rise as our numbers at the casino plummeted. Layoffs and terminations came swiftly before most realized how bad we were taking a hit. The upper echelon held meeting after meeting to assess ways to plug the holes in their sinking ships. The whole Strip feels that way right now ... like a fleet of ships all sinking at once.

Now it is the summer of 2008. This time last year guests were begging us to book at $299 rates. Now we’re begging them to stay for $99 and showering them with amenities—show tickets, free play and food comps. With rising airline prices and the headaches one must endure to get here, the Chinese are going straight to Macau instead of Vegas. Our Far East department has to work harder and comp more leniently the handful of guests they have retained. The Californians are gambling locally. East Coasters are hitting Atlantic City. The only lucky streak we’ve had is the influx of Europeans flocking here on account of the weak dollar, and to contend in the World Series of Poker at the Rio. Other than that, there’s a drought unlike any I’ve seen in my 10 years in the casino.

As a casino host I see all of this firsthand. I spend about four hours of my shift fishing through table-game players, hunting for clients. These days there are mostly what we call “moths”—people who are drawn to the lights, but do little but flutter around aimlessly. Last winter I wouldn’t have bothered with a guy betting a hundred a hand. Now I make myself his best friend. He tells me his kids’ names; I memorize them. He talks about how the economy affects his career; I sympathize. We discuss the shape of things to come for Vegas, for his home town and for America in general. Once I’m done, I create profiles for these guests and input all the notes I’ve mentally recorded. I have various lists of players whom I will eventually market to on behalf of the casino. By the time my hundred-dollar guy leaves, he’s lost $1,300. I comp him the room and do a little extra by picking up about a hundred in food and beverage to keep him from skittering over to Bellagio or Wynn. Last winter he’d have meant nothing to me; I’d have walked right past him. Now it’s the summer of 2008, and I am his servant. His wish is my command.

To hear the veteran hosts talk, Vegas has seen harder times, and what we’re facing today is a flash in the pan. A few of them were young men during the Great Depression and talk of what a ghost town this place was until the government built the Las Vegas Army Air Field, now called Nellis Air Force Base, around the start of WWII. In the 1970s there was inflation and gasoline trouble similar to modern days, and in the ’90s a couple of rough spots. All of us remember how 9/11 threatened to end the Vegas boom, and how the city rebounded twice as strong within two years. All the big casinos began building second towers. There were more jobs than ever before, and people continued moving here in droves.

This talk passes the time as we devour gourmet meals at five-star restaurants, all on the company’s dime. The waiters stand around with overpriced menus in their hands. A suave bartender stands erect with both hands folded on the bar counter. It’s so quiet you can pick apart conversations all around you.

M.C, who is one of the few hosts left on the Strip who has shaken Sinatra’s hand, knows how to benefit from times like these. In fact, he patiently waits for economic downturns so he can shop the real-estate and stock markets like a teenage girl with daddy’s charge card during a fire sale. He’s wise enough not to disclose his net worth to anyone, but judging from the exclusive neighborhood where he resides along with politicians, movie stars and pro athletes, he’s got plenty tucked away. He bought into casino stocks right after 9/11, when no one wanted them. Sold his shares of MGM before they started to slide down off their high. Bought stock in Wynn when everyone was laughing at him and sold it when analysts decided Wynn was a Las Vegas messiah. Got into gold while it was relatively cheap. Got out of that and got into oil before prices started skyrocketing and rode the wave of profits.

Aside from stocks, many of the hosts have begun purchasing homes now that the Valley is abundant with foreclosures. They believe in five years they will all double or triple their money. And probably they will.

We drink our expensive whiskey and wine while eating for free what others pay hundreds for. We speculate and talk economic downturns and rebounds. Then we switch to sports and women and, in some cases, women as sport.

I hated casino hosts until I became one, though I’m not full of stocks and real estate like they are. I play it easy and feel blessed just to own my own home and to have paid off the Chrysler Sebring that they all mock me for. Some of the hosts are failed jocks or the dependant sons of rich, well-connected fathers, and very few worked their way into their careers, but nonetheless I’ve come to admire their optimism and the way they seem to magically prevail while everyone else is losing their jobs and homes. It’s their belief that they will continue building wealth and that Las Vegas will never fall no matter what. They are either Roman emperors who do not hear the barbarians at the gate, or they are Noah navigating his ship through the flood until the storm subsides.

In the meantime the little guys like me continue to hustle. Every phone call. Every conversation with a stranger. Every comp … More weight is tacked onto these choices that were so perfunctory a year ago. I’m aware that one unreturned customer call could cost a casino marketing coordinator, a front-desk clerk, a limo driver, a dealer or a VIP clerk their job.

When I return home each night and lay the host part of me to rest, I sit down at my desk as a regular man with a list of the contacts I made that night. Men in Michigan. Women in Wisconsin. A homebuilder in Iowa with a nervous twitch in his right hand. An architect who studied French for two years in Paris and secretly dreams of being a rock star. A Florida real-estate agent who has miraculously survived the housing mess there.

A sentiment that all of us are weathering this storm together fills me as I insert a few sheets of company letterhead into the printer and write personalized letters to each of them. I thank them for their patronage. Referring to my notes, I reiterate the topics we discussed and the jokes we made. Based on their interests, I pitch them whatever upcoming events I feel might suit them. Boxing matches. Casino marketing poker tournaments. Golf tournaments. We’ve put together a football handicapping event which, in the words of the Godfather, is an offer they cannot refuse.

Near the letter’s close, I make sure to mention their kids or their spouse. It is business, but at the same time I mean what I say. Because they are integral to my survival, they have become more real to me than the customers of a year ago.

Few, if any, hosts go through this much trouble to market on a personal level. This is the summer of 2008, and I’ve learned the toughest times bring out what is still human in you.

When I lay in bed with the lights off and the sound of swaying palm trees soothing me to sleep, I think of the shape of things to come and try to be magically unafraid like my colleagues.

Jon Livorni is the pen name of a host in a Las Vegas casino.