Holy Grail achieved at MGM; Greed and gouing

mgm-picWhile all the media hoo-ha was focused on SLS Las Vegas‘ opening last Friday, a comparably historic event took place at the other end of the Strip. New Hampshire resident Walter Misco hit the jackpot on MGM Grand‘s famously stingy Lion’s Share slot machine (the only one of its kind on the casino floor) — and after only five minutes of play, at that. Misco and wife Linda received the personal congratulations of MGM Grand President Scott Sibella … and $2.4 million. They’re going to put the swag to practical uses like getting a new car and putting their grandchildren through college.

Now that it has been tapped out, what will happen to the Lion’s Share machine? We asked MGM Resorts International spokeswoman Yvette Monet, who quickly replied, “We are still studying [New Hampshire] regulations because Mr. Misco wants to take it home. We are going to try to give it to him. If we cannot, we have not yet decided what we are going to do with it.”

So, if you never played Lion’s Share, you may have definitively missed your chance.

* Much-despised resort fees and other add-ons are not only here to stay but likely to be more numerous and niggling. After all, they’re a $2.25 ARIA-Resort-inside-smallbillion profit center for the hotel industry. New York University‘s Bjorn Hanson claims that, compared to the airlines, this nickel-and-diming by hotels seems “reasonable,” but I beg to differ. After all, in the era of the cellphone, customers are being dunned for the in-room phone they don’t use. Same thing with your in-room safe. And, of course, hotels have quickly become notorious for the temerity with which they charge you for Wi-Fi usage.

At Aria, you’ve got 60 seconds to put that bottle of soda back into the minibar or it goes on your tab. (Some hotels charge an “administration fee” for restocking the bar if you use it.) And if you put your own goodies in the minibar to keep them fresh, MGM will sock you with a $25 “personal use fee.” What nerve!

Cover-all resort fees are, of course, old news. But mandatory tipping may be next. Bermuda‘s Fairmount Southhampton is already trying that one out. One reason Las Vegas tourists are visiting more Bellagio-300-02but spending less may be that their wallets are depleted by being socked with one resort fee upon another. Bellagio will charge you $30 apiece for early check-in, late check-out and ensuring you get the bed of your preference, to say nothing of accommodating special requests, like for a quiet room.

And if you’re staying at Paris-Las Vegas, forget the “convenience” of printing out your boarding pass at the hotel. It’ll set you back eight bucks. And to think that Vegas was once known for value for the dollar. Do you think executives get bonuses for dreaming up new and ever more draconian surcharges? I wouldn’t bet against it.

* Fiscal opacity by Caesars Entertainment has been drawing fire in Ohio. And now it’s costing the company and partner Rock Gaming 200 grand.

* A couple of decades ago, biometric facial-recognition software was the big, coming thing. But that was then. Now, casinos are going back to the old-school eye in the sky: the human kind. “As soon as facial recognition came out, all the people that didn’t want to be identified put on a baseball cap and sunglasses,” says Beverly Griffin, of Griffin Investigations, which got burned by an excess of false positives.

“The best facial recognition that I have is my people,” says Griffin of her team. MGM is going a similar route, relying on 4,000 cameras but also on a crack team of spotters who include a retired dentist. The focus is on behavior, telltale physical action or deviations in game math, not faces per se. In these days when NSA surveillance is so much in the news, Vegas surveillance seems almost reassuringly quaint.

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