Word: harrah
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...company that has never paid a cash dividend. Resorts will soon split 3 for 1, and it is scarcely the only big winner. Some others, with their rises from April through August: Caesars World, 583%; Playboy, 351%; Bally, 283%; Del Webb, 281%; and Harrah...
DIED. William Fisk Harrah, 66, founder of two of Nevada's largest casinos, who built a fortune by stressing that nothing in the management of gambling be left to chance; after an operation for an aortal aneurysm; in Rochester, Minn. Harrah got his start in the 1930s by buying his father's failing bingo parlor in Venice, Calif., for $500; ever after, he catered to the small-time player. At both his Reno and Lake Tahoe gaming resorts, Harrah used computers to track daily profits and detect betting-table swindles. He also hired guards to watch for cheaters...
That is no idle boast. The 1,600 seats in Harrah's showrooms are almost always filled every night, and top performers sell out nearly a month in advance: a recent John Denver engagement drew 82,000 telephone-reservation requests in a single week. During the fiscal year that ended June 30, Harrah's hotels averaged a high 92% occupancy rate and net profit rose 25% from 1976 to a record $14.6 million on a 13.5% increase in revenues, which totaled $161.6 million. Unlike many casinos in Las Vegas that cater primarily to heavy-spending Eastern gamblers, Harrah...
...supermarket approach, though, is slowly giving way to a new opulence as Harrah's tries to upgrade the quality of its clientele. Each room at its recently expanded Tahoe hotel cost $100,000 to construct and contains two baths with telephones and miniature Sony TV sets. A similarly posh addition is planned eventually for Reno, where the company faces new competition next year from two large hotels now under construction, the MGM Grand and the Sahara. In still another move designed to boost income, Harrah's has begun manufacturing more $1 one-armed bandits-slot machines that take...
With $50 million in spare cash, Harrah's is starting to search elsewhere for new jackpots. On the drawing board at corporate headquarters are plans for an Australian casino ("They're the gamblingest fools in the world down there," says Dyer) and "Harrah's World," a Disney-like entertainment-gambling complex west of Reno. But the company's aversion to debt and its insistence on rigid controls over the tiniest details of its business mean Harrah's will probably not diversify very fast. The odds are heavy against its opening a casino in New Jersey...