Last week I posted on reports that Sullivan County, New
York’s Resorts World Catskills (RWC), though an unqualified success at bringing
jobs to its area, was falling way short of financial projections, and was also
getting subpar TripAdvisor reviews. How
did it look? What concerns deserve
management attention? Overall, are these
problems as bad as they seem?
I visited it a week ago Saturday night. The sign on New York Route 17, an expressway
through its area, was clear, but once taking the proper exit not so much. After one more sign pointing me to a right
turn leading into a roundabout, I had to guess the correct way out. I did, and a stoplight at Resorts World
Drive, along with an arrow pointing me left, said I was on the right way. After two miles through the countryside, isolating
RWC from the rest of the county, I was there.
Thousands of well-lit parking spaces surrounded the impressive
and obviously new 18-story hotel and below casino. I easily walked through and got in.
My first mission was to join the Player’s Club. That is the well-established way of getting
both communications and complimentary food, beverages, lodging, cash back, and
prizes for gambling there, and before even engaging a slot machine anyone
should join that or the equivalent. The
line at the desk was about 15 people long, but, with four people working, moved
quickly. I wanted to see if their
process was as fast as those in Las Vegas casinos, and it was – they put my
driver’s license in a reader and, questions on my email and phone number and
about two minutes later, I had my card, preprinted with my name and including
$10 worth of free slot play.
To redeem the latter, I wanted a $5 machine. Not easy to find – they, with $1 machines,
were in the “high limit” area, which, with two sets of directions, sent me
through the gorgeously new gaming expanse, which I wandered through more after
losing my two attempts. It was fully up
to modern standards – the “slots” (in quotes since you can’t play them with
coins, only bills) all with video screens, the table games mostly filled with
players including some betting hundreds per play, the restaurants with
concentrations at $8 to $20 per meal, people everywhere, well-marked restrooms,
and good directional signs. I also went
to the poker room. No longer can the
casual once-a-week-with-friends players expect to survive at casino poker – the
modern version is no-limit, with the players’ skills often honed by hundreds or
thousands of hours of compressed-time online experience, but, judging by the 15
tables in play, there were plenty of those even in this low-population area. The room, though comfortable, didn’t have
much special to offer its players, with comps set at a minimal $1 per hour with
no higher promotional times, but attendance didn’t seem lacking.
Though the RWC facility looked vibrant and beautiful, I
found a few other causes for concern. Room
rates, for now seemingly $200 per night and up, were sky-high by casino-hotel
standards. They did not have
headline-name entertainment, and, overall, the non-gambling options seemed weak. The 24-hour diner, while a real and necessary
asset, charged the likes of $16 for nachos.
These may not stop those from traveling to visit once but will impede critical
repeat business.
There are still many things about RWC’s viability we don’t
know. Beyond what I saw, here are some
questions for their management and ownership.
First, what has happened with the effort to bring in high-rolling
Asian customers? They themselves could
put you in the black. Are you doing all
you can there?
Second, are you marketing RWC aggressively to New York City? There are hundreds of thousands of people,
many quite wealthy now, with memories of childhood Catskills trips. Are you considering offering them the likes
of free hotel stays?
Third, what can you do to step up your entertainment
options? Last decade, that shortage
killed a billion-dollar Las Vegas casino with a storied history, the Aladdin. I live 20 miles away, get all four local newspapers,
and see stories and advertising about oodles of small local concerts elsewhere,
but nothing about anything you offer.
Fourth, are dollar slot machines, common as far back as the
1970s, really “high limit” in 2018? Is
it possible that more of them, even with the modern trend toward playing many
multiples of the minimum, would help that strange per-machine shortfall? If not, with your state-of-the-art machines
getting such good reviews, just what is
the slot-machine-revenue problem?
Fifth, where is your community involvement? I expected that you would have the likes of
buses to canoeing and fishing providers, not to mention partnerships with
community institutions such as WJFF Radio, whose management has heard nothing
from you. You can’t go it alone here,
especially when so many locals didn’t want your facility built.
Sixth, how much do you project that legalized sports
betting, your Monster golf course, and your $33 million entertainment complex
will help your business? Do you
seriously expect a big boost from the Kartrite indoor water park, which is well
into Pennsylvania and has its own hotel?
Is it possible you need rooms to compete with Las Vegas’s $50-per-night
offerings and nearby Monticello’s $60 ones?
Seventh, can you quantify how much our bad winter and early
spring weather hurt your bottom line?
Eighth, is there or is there not a gap between the previous
six months’ results and what you expected?
Ninth, is it just my perception, or has your communication,
in general, been lacking? With my blog
and WJFF program I qualify as a journalist, and doubt I was the only one whose
multiple information requests you did not respond to.
And tenth, the big question.
With casinos now in 44 states, we know they are not automatically travel
destinations. With those in the Silent
Generation much larger per-capita gamblers than Boomers, and the Millennials
lowest of all, is it possible that the model of people going to gamble, to the
exclusion of almost everything else, for a week or weekend is becoming
obsolete? If so, how are you going to
deal with that?
Overall, I don’t know how successful Resorts World Catskills
will be in five or ten years. I am
inclined to be optimistic. But it’s
nothing that will be given to it. “If
you build it, they will come” may work for cornfield baseball diamonds in the
movies, but it’s nothing casino resorts can expect in real life.