Rooms at the top

It’s been a bumpy and expensive education in the Las Vegas casino business for Goldman Sachs. However, the banking house is giving its flagship property, the Stratosphere, a new look (and a new general manger to go with it). If the quality of the revamped rooms is anything like those at the made-over Tropicana Las Vegas, it raises the question of what — aside from point accruals — is the incentive to stay at other mid-market properties whose heavily indebted owners have let things go to seed.

Over the years, there’s been much talk, little action about providing casino product geared toward Southern Nevada’s considerable Hispanic population. But while Vegas has dithered, Herbst Gaming saw an opportunity and pounced. Heck, even before Ramon Ayala was packing ’em in, Primm was drawing the most ethnically diverse casino crowds I’ve ever seen. Given the younger median age of the Latino populace — and its high frequency of casino visitation — you’d have thought somebody would have acted on this sooner. It’s certainly proving to be a godsend for Herbst, which looked as though it was going to dry up and blow away not so long ago. Who knows? The recently bankrupt company might be the comeback story of 2011.

Speaking of comebackers, last year’s turnaround story was taking place at Isle of Capri Casinos, which seemed like buzzard fodder back in ’07. Isle found a new identity — and management team — by enlisting the old Argosy Gaming executive team, who’d made a brief stopover at Trump Entertainment Resorts. (Their short tenure says more about obstreperous Donald Trump than about the Argonauts.) When I spoke with then-Argosy CEO James Perry at World Gaming Congress, back in 2001, he would have been the most surprised person in the room if you told him he’d still be running a casino company 10 years later. I can’t recall whether our conversation was on or off the record so let it suffice to say he was planning a much earlier retirement.

Fast forward to 2011 and Perry is finally going to take it somewhat easier by kicking himself upstairs to the executive chairmanship of Isle. Longtime lieutenant Virginia McDowell now gets to steer the ship herself, ascending from COO to CEO. This is newsworthy for obvious reasons, as well as being a testament to McDowell’s years of keeping a steady hand on the tiller. Of course, this also means Isle needs a new COO and I hear that Andrew Pascal is between jobs …

New Isle boss McDowell.