Tovin Lapan
For years casinos and resorts have coveted well-established brands that everyone from age 21 to 80 would recognize. Think chefs like Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck, and restaurants like Capital Grille and Carnegie Deli.
But with its current crop of scheduled renovations and additions, Las Vegas is reaching out specifically to millennials, choosing brands, restaurants and chefs that are considered the pinnacle of cool and typically come from trendsetting cities like New York and Los Angeles.
While the Wynn decided to gut its traditional golf course this year in order to expand the resort, MGM Grand Hotel and Casino welcomed the flagship Topgolf location, a golfing experience decidedly tuned toward millennials. Instead of walking the links in white visors, you sit in a booth (complete with table service) and play an interactive golf game involving balls with internal tracking chips and automatic scoring.
Earlier this year, when MGM Resorts announced a $450 million, two-year renovation of the Monte Carlo, the key brands and players involved were full of names that will get millennials buzzing. The property is being split into a larger luxury resort and casino, Park MGM, and a smaller hotel called the NoMad, which is modeled after the hip hotel of the same name run by the Sydell Group in New York that features magic performances and an annual masquerade ball. In addition to a version of the NoMad restaurant, the new property will host a branch of Mario Batali's Eataly, the popular Italian market found in New York and Chicago.
The moves make sense when the demographic trends are considered. Millennials are coming to Vegas and spending money, but their habits differ from their older counterparts.
According to surveys conducted in 2015 by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, millennials do far less planning before they arrive in town than other generations. That includes everything from where they'll stay, to what shows they'll see and where they'd like to gamble. Since they tend to wait until the last minute, it stands to reason that familiar brands that have reached acclaim in places in New York and Los Angeles could beckon them.
Additionally, millennials do have money to spend. In 2015, of all Vegas visitors who bought travel and tour packages for their visit, millennials spent by far the most. The average cost of a package booked by millennials was $1,061 per person, while no other generation had an average above $857.
While millennials are the least likely to gamble and budgeted the smallest amount on average for gambling, they do show other signs of becoming a lucrative market. Their spending overall does not lag far behind other groups, and millennials are the most likely group to attend a show or visit a spa. Also, they are the backbone of nightclub, pool party and dayclub attendance.
The Monte Carlo renovation and Topgolf are not the only signs that Vegas is targeting millennial-friendly brands.
MGM Resorts decided to rebrand The Hotel at Mandalay Bay to a new operator in 2012, and wound up choosing Delano, one of the hottest names in the Miami Beach hotel scene. Also, when the SLS Hotel chain made a move into Las Vegas in 2014 and took over the Sahara property, instead of a new brand for the Strip it kept the SLS name, which has cache with hip urbanites in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. When the Linq Promenade opened in 2014, Caesars Entertainment anchored it with the High Roller observation wheel and Brooklyn Bowl, a popular music venue that sells fried chicken and focuses on booking acts that attract the 18-to-35 demographic.
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, which launched with a music program and culture that embraced younger generations of visitors keeps adding to its selection of hip names. Celebrity chef David Chang will open a branch of his popular Momofuku restaurant at the resort later this year, and Eggslut, the Los Angeles-based breakfast joint that draws long lines, opened earlier this year.
Millennials have proven a potent demographic, and, although they don't gamble like Vegas visitors of old, they have bought into the other amenities on offer, from buzzworthy restaurants to the latest in innovative shows and entertainment.
Topgolf is at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, and not the Mandalay Bay as an earlier version of this article stated.