Word: hilton
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...almost enough to make you want to spend a weekend in Vegas, just to see how the new machine works. But what is the view across the lake going to look like, once Hilton has finished its own contribution to the urban mix, the Paris Las Vegas, with a half-size replica of the Eiffel Tower right across from the shores of Bellagio? Don't ask. Never mind. For sure, it won't have any Picassos...
What's even crazier is that there are several other madmen up and down the Las Vegas Strip today building billion-dollar pleasure palaces like so many Starbucks. The Hilton Paris is re-creating the City of Light, while Circus Circus' Mandalay Bay is evoking the South Pacific, just down the street from the Venetian's Adriatic. And, of course, there's Steve Wynn's modern-art museum and homage to Italy's Lake Como, the $1.6 billion Bellagio...
...Tower and surf in the ocean. And you'll be happy to pay up for it, or there will be some very unhappy investors. "The driving feature of Vegas will always be gambling, but the days of giving away rooms to gamblers are over," says Stephen Bollenbach, CEO of Hilton, which is building the $760 million re-creation of Paris. The idea now is to command better room rates, more on a par with resort or European vacation destinations, by offering comparable accommodations. A discounted room on the Strip now goes for $49 to $99. To sleep in Hilton...
...especially if upper-crust vacationers don't show up in the predicted numbers, leaving half-empty high-cost hotels. The Strip's bread-and-butter visitor isn't likely to trade up to $150-a-night rooms from $49 ones, even if there's a mint on the pillow. Hilton chief Bollenbach (who is also on the board at Time Warner, the parent company of TIME) is predicting 18 months of bruising battles, with older, smaller properties taking a hit from big outfits like...
...panel was made up of Jill D. Altshuler '84, Carla A Harris '84, Elizabeth S. Hilton-Segel '94, Cynthia Bates and Torrance Boone...