BLOG POSTS WHERE MONTH IS 11, AND DAY IS 5, AND YEAR IS 2010

Friday 11/05/2010 by jackl

MERMAID MOSAIC

A mermaid themed chandelier in the Boardwalk Lobby of the AC Convention Hall, taken on my iPhone during setbreak last Saturday.

Friday 11/05/2010 by jackl

PHISH LEAVES AC FLUSH

Atlantic City casino revenues are down again this month ...

Gaming revenues at Atlantic City casinos dropped again ...

Atlantic City casinos took another hit ...

For years, headlines like these - driven by monthly casino-revenue figures - have been unrelenting: The amount of gambling money Atlantic City casinos take in has continued to slide.

But the problem is, too few people have been looking at all the numbers. The focus on the monthly casino take has overshadowed a bright spot that Atlantic City needs to focus on.

Yes, fewer people are coming to Atlantic City, but they are spending more money on nongaming activities such as hotel rooms, meals and entertainment, according to a study by Spectrum Gaming of Linwood. The amount of money lost gambling in Atlantic City fell 23 percent since 2007, but spending on hotel rooms is up 21 percent and food and drink is up 6 percent, Spectrum found.

Many casinos have been decreasing comps. Yet people are still spending - and spending more, even in these tough times - to stay, dine and be entertained in Atlantic City.

What does that mean? First, it means the resort is clearly on the right track with the kinds of events it hosted last weekend. The wildly popular Phish concerts completely sold out 14,100 seats for three nights at Boardwalk Hall. That's 42,300 tickets. Many of those fans stayed in the casino hotels, ate at restaurants, shopped at stores and visited nightclubs. The same weekend, Harrah's Entertainment's "Out in A.C." event reached out to the lucrative gay tourism market, while Bally's Atlantic City hosted more traditional Atlantic City entertainment Saturday night - a boxing match.

These are the kinds of weekends that need to happen more often. Sure, some of the people who packed the city gambled. But that's not what brought them to Atlantic City. That's not what will keep them coming.

And Atlantic City's future growth area probably won't be gambling.

"We're still the second-biggest gaming market in the country, but when you lose a billion dollars of revenue that's not coming back, you have to change your business model," said Don Marrandino, Harrah's Eastern Division president.

Editorial in the Press of Atlantic City, "Noncasino revenue / A.C.'s growth area" (11/4/10)
Friday 11/05/2010 by jackl

QUOTE

I'm not a phish fan, in fact I'd never listened to their music before this weekend. Let me say that I have never met a more friendly, excited and happy group of people in Atlantic City than the phish fans. I thought their positivity was infectious. They were a joy to be around while I was there and I would welcome them back in a heartbeat. If what this article says is true, I never saw the tiniest hint.

Reader Daniel Halloway, responding to an article "Phish concert provides a heavy assortment of drugs" by Bob Holt on newjerseynewsroom.com, discussing drug arrest statistics in Atlantic City (and restricting its discussion of the entire weekend and three


Phish.net

Phish.net is a non-commercial project run by Phish fans and for Phish fans under the auspices of the all-volunteer, non-profit Mockingbird Foundation.

This project serves to compile, preserve, and protect encyclopedic information about Phish and their music.

Credits | Terms Of Use | Legal | DMCA

© 1990-2024  The Mockingbird Foundation, Inc. | Hosted by Linode