The thing I love about Las Vegas is that it is resilient.
And it can take a punch and won’t throw in the towel, to use a boxing metaphor. After all, there was a time when every major fight made its way to Las Vegas.
When people said it couldn’t market itself with its bad boy reputation, the city did just that with its highly successful advertising campaign "What happens here stays here."
When detractors said the city couldn’t survive on the residency program, Las Vegas went out and hired the biggest names in the music industry to play its venues. In fact, the city just did it again the other night when it opened the Sphere with U2.
When people said that Vegas would never attract a professional sports franchise because of the gambling element, Las Vegas went out and got three of them within the four major sports. The city had the foresight to see that attitudes would change about sports. Heck, the city even has a Formula One racing event coming this fall.
And when the pandemic even shut down Las Vegas for a little while, the city bounced back even stronger.
You see what I’m getting at here? So when 60,000 hospitality workers vote to authorize a strike at 22 hotels, do you think Las Vegas is going to flinch?
Brother, please.
T-Mobile Arena grand opening in Las Vegas. (photo courtesy of MGM Resorts International)
This is not meant to disparage the hospitality worker. They are the backbone of the industry, and they help keep all the fancy hotels and resorts running. Whatever they are asking for is more than well deserved.
People love their gaming, they love their superstars, they love their luxury and they love to be pampered. And they love to do things they wouldn’t normally do at home. In a nutshell, that’s Las Vegas.
It truly is an adult playground.
Las Vegas Strip hotels are already 5 percent ahead of last year’s intake and we're barely into the fiscal year. The Nevada Gaming Commission just reported that Las Vegas hotels won more than $1.2 billion just in the month of August alone.
So if you think Las Vegas is going to bat an eye over what some are saying could be the worst strike in 40 years, think again. Las Vegas has been through so much that this is like the proverbial drop in the bucket.
Certainly there is a happy medium somewhere between the hotels, the hotel workers, the city, and the unions. A strike would be inconvenient, yes, but it won’t break Las Vegas.
It will take far more than a strike to crack the resiliency of the city.
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