I had always heard that gambling helps make for a recession proof economy. Is that true?

How is the economy overall in Las Vegas? Is it a good place to live and hobby at the same time?

I would assume with mega projects like City Center that there would be a small unemployment rate and with hundreds of millions being pumped into the city that it would be the place to be!

Oh, and passengers going through McCarran are down as well from year to year.

Plus, don't forget- Wall Street bonuses don't happen when your company goes into bankruptcy.

Also: There's the Cosmopolitan, a casino/condo project that got repo'ed by the bank. Boyd's slowing down construction on Echelon and the Westward Ho site. Stations is slowing down the plans for what they want to do with the Wild Wild West site (they are in the middle of finishing up Aliante Station, IIRC).

You do the math on what that means for the local economy.

It's a great time to visit Las Vegas if YOU are doing well (the offers are very, VERY nice), but let's face it- if you are faced with $4 gas and rising costs for food and other things, it's a lot easier to cut out a vacation than eating, ya know?

A year ago, the MGM Mirage and HET properties were doing you a favor taking your money, now they're begging you to come in. MGG's market cap is down something like 60% last 12 mo.

I've found Vegas ok to live in. Not enough to get rid of the apartment in LA, but definitely serviceable. If you're one of those retired at 30yo guys, with too much money and too much free time, then it might work for you.

I've heard the downturn has even affected the strip clubs, in that the best looking girls (those with other options) are now scarce, leaving the lifers.  Something certainly happened to the quality at the OG.  Can anyone with first hand knowledge comment?

Discounts everywhere ie. Rooms, food, show tickets, many casino's offering major perks just to get you here ...... you just need to know which ones to pick and choose from ... be conservative with your cash and rate of play at the tables and you can have a very enjoyable trip with very little risk ......


spinner

-- Modified on 9/16/2008 9:46:20 AM

Discounts everywhere ie. Rooms, food, show tickets, many casino's offering major perks just to get you here ...... you just need to know which ones to pick and choose from ... be conservative with your cash and rate of play at the tables and you can have a very enjoyable trip with very little risk ......

-- Modified on 9/16/2008 9:45:23 AM

It is perfect if you played your cards right. Las Vegas is so diversified that it can withstand what would make other cities crush. The Economy is doing so-so. The cost of living has raised significantly over the past several years. You can also find some great deals on real estate. Also a decent rental market. Are you planning on moving here?

And City Center is looking amazing. It is so great to see it come alive! You can see a clear difference just between the quality of glass between Panorama Towers and the City Center buildings.

Gaming isn't the only game in town.  The gaming companies expanded into dining, high end shopping and entertainment.  You see a lot of churn on the entertainment side (Hairspray, Avenue Q, Spam-a-lot, We Will Rock You stick out in my mind but there's dozens of others this decade).

The primary driver of tourist dollars to Vegas is SoCal.  Most SoCal tourist end up driving to Vegas.  When gas was getting close to $5 a gallon, that well dried up a bit.  When you add that people can't cash out their home equity from CA, NV, AZ (or FL for that matter) due to unstable home prices, they don't feel very flush with cash, enough to come to Vegas (maybe spinner39 and Number6 are the rare exceptions).  There's a lot of deals out there to get people to come to Vegas now.  July occupancy rate was 88% (below the 90+% we usually see, most hotels anywhere break even at 70%).

I heard an interview Steve Wynn did a while back.  He said that 30% of the people applying to Encore are out of work.  The local unemployment rate is higher than the national average (in the boom years, it was well below).

From my perspective, I have no clue why I'm still here since everyone in my field (IT) gets lowballed (overly broad generalization, I guess I'm not lowballed enough these days to move to greener pastures).

Back to the rest of the local economy, we had some decent drivers outside of gaming.  Construction was huge when they were building homes and other projects like mad.  With the credit markets dried up, 40% of existing homes on the market REO or short sales (making for long closing process).  Boyd Gaming is putting their $4 billion Echelon project on the former Stardust site on hold for at least a year.  The World Market Center was a great furniture play and might eventually rival High Point, NC (they did pretty much shut down SF as the western market center) but with the housing market in a funk, not many people looking to furnish their homes.  The convention business is slowing, attendees and exhibitors are sending less people and staying for fewer nights.

Sure, there are drivers for jobs, Alliante Station, Encore, M Resorts, and CityCenter will need staffing.  New restaurants and nightclubs are opening (and closing) all the time.  But without the general US (and primarily SoCal) economy picking up, Vegas isn't the hottest place to live these days.

As for the hobby side, I think the median for well reviewed providers in the database here is either $350 or $400 for the first hour.  If you ask me, that's not inexpensive.  When you factor in that jobs don't play that well these days, this is an expensive town to play.  Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of great providers that call Las Vegas their home base.  I've been fortunate to have had the pleasure of a few (and if fortune smiles on me, a lot more).  But for most people living paycheck to paycheck, I would think that after pissing away play money on gambling and whatever else, there's no slug of cash for locals to pay for a fun hour.  The local providers have always been primarily for those that have a lot of cash with them and that usually means gamblers visiting.  When you have less of them, at least less casual gamblers with a small slug of cash (vs the invited whales), providers aren't seeing the flow of clients they used to.

There's still a lot of opportunity here.  It takes a lot of cash and a lot of hard work but for the right person, you might do well.  For those just looking for a job and have no juice in this town (FYI I think OJ is going down this time around), you're going to have a tough time.

Bob (I approve this message)

with very few exceptions, I have not noticed many ladies actually lowering their rates.

       To the contrary, enough have pushed their rate to $500 so that it seems the mean is moving in that direction. In addition, the last year has seen a number of new girls with no reviews and blurred pictures coming onto the scene and asking for $600.
These gals seem to have concluded that their pictures alone can command premiuim rates.


         And to add insult to injury (for Vegas locals), I have seen some touring providers raise their rate to the Vegas level. Finally, I think Vegas has more elite priced providers ($800 and up) then anywhere else, excepting the porn stars whom I've always suspected get very little business anyway at their grossly inflated rates.

       All of this tells me that the slow down in the Vegas and national economy has not hit this echelon of the escort trade.

"All of this tells me that the slow down in the Vegas and national economy has not hit this echelon of the escort trade."

Contrary to to your belief many are quite slow. They just are not going to say so on a public forum of any kind.

If all the posts are beginning to be specials of all manner and such lines as "it's slow as hell, I need some dates". Don't look for that either any time soon, but that would be a sign of "rock bottom".

All of this tells me that the slow down in the Vegas and national economy has not significantly impacted this echelon of the escort trade sufficient to result in a rate reduction.

         Another factor discounting a significant impact is the lack of any apparent increase in ads on this Board. In fact, if you take out the agency scam artists, there are really only 5 or 6 ladies who regularly take advantage of TER’s free ad feature.

        Of course, I can’t tell if this is because they view the TER ads as ineffective compared to the paid ads on Eros etc, or if they don’t have any need to advertise because they have enough business anyway. But basic market principles tell me that, at least with the ladies who view this as a business as opposed to an occasional fling, a significant reduction in business will lead either to more advertising or a rate reduction.

But Cindy will probably come on and tell me I'm wrong again.