Introducing Planet Harrah’s

Newly Harrah’s-ized Planet Hollywood has got a new Web site. OK, it’s a little rudimentary by 2010 standards but we’re in the top of the first inning here. (If for some reason the page doesn’t show in your browser, the promo code for $99/night suite rate is “tower.”)

Fans of Peepshow will be happy to see that performances resume on March 1. One presumes this means a near-total recasting of the show, its previous set of performers having been sent on a multi-month hiatus. Whatever Peepshow 4.0 looks like, it will probably bear only a passing, downsized resemblance to the Mel B./Kelly Monaco extravaganza of a year ago.

Two other observations: The lead image, unfortunately, is shot from an angle that maximizes the architectural incongruities of Planet Ho. In the wayback, circa 2001, Robert Earl toyed with encasing the half-hearted “Moorish” look of the hotel tower in a big glass cube. One can easily see how that concept might have been impractical (imagine a micro-climate between the glass sheath and the tower proper) but it’s Planet Ho’s aesthetic fate to always be stuck somewhere betwixt fish and foul.

Also, how did Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall get to be Harrah’s fourth-highest-priced hotel (check the right-hand column), below Caesars Palace, Paris-Las Vegas and Planet Ho? “Just lucky, I guess?” Who’d have thought the day would arrive that it would ascend so high upon the Harrah’s food chain? Congratulations to the once (and to some of us, always) Barbary Coast for outpricing the Flamingo and The Rio.

Speaking of which … an S&G reader writes in with the following query: “I’m rereading Winner Takes All and it says that Harrah’s bought the Rio for $518 million in stock and $370 mil in debt assumption, for a total of $888 mil. In today’s dollars, I would put that at about $1.3 billion. Which makes me wonder — how much is the Rio worth now? Maybe I’m missing something, but I see the Rio as being about a $500 million property today. That would seem like a pretty big hiccup for the Smartest Man in Gaming.”

Tough question. And congratulations on your excellent choice of reading material. It’s a fine and well-reported book.

First, let’s take CEO Gary Loveman off the hook. The Rio was purchased on predecessor Phil Satre‘s watch, for the understandable reason that Harrah’s didn’t have a trophy property in Las Vegas with which to incentivize Total Rewards players. Satre, to his credit, realized that Harrah’s Las Vegas wasn’t cutting it in that respect. Unfortunately, Harrah’s one-method-fits-all management style took a property that was successful because of the service culture and business style the Anthony Marnell family had cultivated and tried to Harrah-ify it, with disastrous financial and PR results. The Rio-into-Harrah’s move also meant that a casino that was perceived as a young-ish, hip hangout became geriatrified. It was a bungle and one could plausibly argue that The Rio never fully recovered.

To arrive at a 2010 sale price for The Rio, one would have to send out an S.O.S. to Liz Benston at the Las Vegas Sun. Having pored over Harrah’s “Byzantine” (as she calls them) financial statements, she’d know the 2009 EBIDTA for The Rio. (Note to self … ) Multiply that cash flow by seven and you’d have a plausible asking price. I agree with you that it would probably be far closer to $500 million — even less, if I had to make a prediction — than $1.3 billion. One also has to take 12 years’ worth of depreciation into account.

Under the Marilyn Winn administration, The Rio’s depreciation has accelerated far more sharply than that of the (comparably old) Mirage, not least because maintenance has been so obviously sloughed off. Except for Penn & Teller, the entertainment on offer could charitably be described as “lackluster,” although the two buffets are among the top five or six in town. So you’ll understand why it’s difficult to suppress a chuckle when Harrah’s CFO Jonathan Halkyard boasts that he and Winn will as much as quadruple Planet Ho’s cash flow. Unless it’s done with smoke and mirrors (i.e., by jobbing the debtors and thereby reducing interest payments, too), the notion that Winn can do for Planet Ho what she couldn’t for The Rio is risible … unless the Secret Plan is to re-relocate the World Series of Poker there.

Perhaps the only operator who could effect a turnaround at the corner of Flamingo Avenue and Valley View is Rio neighbor George Maloof — and don’t you wish he would? No casino-hotel tower in Las Vegas compares, IMO, to the beauty of The Rio’s. What a shame that an erstwhile standard-setter has been allowed to fall toward the rear of the pack.

Wayne’s World. Readers who feel I’m too hard upon the unfortunate Wayne Newton will be pleased to note that, in terms of script, The Wayner’s Once Before I Go has it all over Viva Elvis. Admittedly, anything with a “See Spot run” narrative arc will surpass the Viva Elvis script, which is literally cut and pasted from the program book, with a few cringe-worthy, faux-folksy expressions thrown in. It won’t tell you anything about Elvis Presley that you didn’t know 35 years ago. Newton’s script, by comparison, is far more substantive and personal, and actually will expand your knowledge of the man. If Newton’s voice were in seagoing condition and he had a somewhat larger budget (and technically superior showroom) at his disposal, he’d have Viva Elvis clobbered.

World’s biggest asshat found. ‘Nuff said.