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 Travel & Outdoors | February 2006 
Hooters Hotel Opens in Las Vegas
 Tedd Florendo - KLAS
| | Some question whether their hotel and casino can keep up with the bigger neighbors on the Las Vegas Strip. |
Hooters may be best known for its chicken wings and waitresses but it may soon be known for its hotel casino. The Hooters Hotel in Las Vegas opens this week.
After 17 years, the Hotel San Remo threw in the towel because of lack of business. The Hooters restaurant chain is a booming business throughout the U.S. But some question whether their hotel and casino can keep up with the bigger neighbors on the Las Vegas Strip.
Richard Lanlois, vice president of Hooters marketing, said, "Hooters, as a brand, has mass appeal." Lanlois says they have 400 restaurants throughout the country and all of them bring in big cash for the popular chain.
However, those are restaurants. Could the 30,000 square foot palace go the way the San Remo did? Langois doesn't think so. "Each year about 60 million customers go through 400 domestic stores. If we get a small portion of that business when they came to Vegas, this is going to be the busiest casino on the Las Vegas Strip."
The casino has 656 rooms and suites, nine restaurants and bars including three large stages for live entertainment. Hooters will also have nearly 700 slot and video poker machines and 32 table games. It's smaller than its neighbors, but gaming experts think the Hooters hotel and casino has a lot of potential.
Richard Saber is a writer with Gaming Today magazine. He says the Hooters hotel may be a pint-size version of the Palms and the Hard Rock. But its marketing strategy is just the same. "The Hotel San Remo was a nice place, but that was Las Vegas twenty-five years ago. Times have changed, Vegas has changed. The people spending money are the early 20 to 30 to 40 year olds. That's where the money comes from."
Langois agreed, "When you look at the profile of an average Vegas visitor and you compare that to our main audience and Hooters restaurants, that's a lot of crossover."
Prime real estate and an aggressive marketing strategy have gaming experts placing the odds in the Hooters hotels favor. The hotel is slated to open at 9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2 following an impressive fireworks display near the Strip.
tflorendo@klastv.com |
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