Boyd Gaming’s largest casino, the Orleans, is a hybrid property catering to tourists and locals alike. Where locals are drawn to gaming values and video poker offerings, tourists find the atmosphere of the Orleans to be more laid back than the atmosphere on the Strip. The Orleans also offers great values in terms of room rates, and is still only a five-minute taxi ride away from the Strip.

The property has been constantly expanding since Coast Casinos opened it on December 18, 1996. Owners have added amenities like bowling alleys, movie theaters, and an arcade in 1999, an 8,000-seat arena, and most recently, a second hotel tower in 2004. Coast Casinos merged with Boyd Gaming in the same year, and the Orleans came under new ownership.

Orleans General Manager Tony Taeubel said that the transition brought a new owner to the property, but the similarities between the operating styles of Coast Casinos founder Michael Gaughan and Boyd Gaming Chairman and CEO Bill Boyd were so similar in their focus on treating the team members as family that there were no major disruptions.

Taeubel recently spoke with Casino Connection Publisher Roger Gros about the property’s success and the future of the Orleans.

As Boyd Gaming’s largest property in Las Vegas, what kind of attention do you get from corporate?
Taeubel: We get quite a bit. You’d be surprised. The corporate staff is here quite a bit for meetings and different events. And they do spend time here—Mr. (Bill) Boyd and Mr. (Kevin) Smith do spend time having lunch and things over here. As you could expect, being that it is our largest property in Las Vegas until Echelon opens, the Orleans does get their attention and their interest.

Give us a thumbnail description of the property. How many rooms do you have? What’s the square footage?
We have nearly 1,900 rooms and suites here. We have about 10 restaurants. The square footage is around 100,000. There are 2,000 slots and 60 table games, but we’re unique in the fact that we’re dealing with such a hybrid—as some of our competitors like the Palms and Rio—where we have locals mixed with destination travelers.

You’ve opened several expansions of this hotel, including one that brought the Orleans Arena. How big is the arena and what do you use it for?
The arena can seat up to about 8,000 patrons depending on how it is set up. We use it for anything from the Disney shows to the circus, and we’ve gotten into some national basketball tournaments recently. Florida and Kansas played last year at our property. We also do a lot of concerts. The concert arena has gotten extremely competitive in the last few months with all the other action going on in town, but we’re still playing to that market.

We also have a level for suite holders and our club members where they get tickets to a number of events as well. And we also use the arena for community events like graduations.

The arena is also home to a number of sports teams—the Las Vegas Wranglers hockey team and the Gladiators arena football team. Is that going to be an ongoing thing?
We think so. The Wranglers hockey team has been a nice staple for us, and the number of hockey games during the season really draws the people in on a regular basis. Arena football, we started off slow this year as the team struggled to a 2-14 record. But we’re hoping with some changes in the coaching staff and the players we’ll be able to hit it hard next year.

Is there any crossover between these sporting events at the arena and the casino? Do the people who come for those events also play in the casino?
From what we can tell from the events we’ve been holding—like the national basketball tournaments and sports-related Nike clinics—absolutely. They’re a great demographic for us. They’re particularly table-game oriented players, but they’re great for the gaming side.

Does the arena attract other customers? Does it help you promote the property and introduce it to potential customers?
It does because those sporting events are well-attended. The Florida-Kansas game last year was sold out. This year we have North Carolina, USC and a number of other top teams coming that we’re excited about. We’re also negotiating to get a couple of conference tournaments here, NCAA tournaments. So we’re kind of moving in that direction to become the local basketball venue.

The Orleans is one of the hybrid properties catering to both locals and tourists. What percentage of each do you see?
It is somewhat event-specific. During the week we have a number of business travelers who are looking for value off the Strip. On weekends we have the FIT destination traveler and it’s event based because we do a lot of large groups. But the revenue stream, as far as we can see, is close to about half and half.

Boyd Gaming and Coast Casinos, the previous owner of this property, are both masters of the locals market. Have you been able to blend the expertise of both companies to benefit the property?
When Boyd took over two-and-a-half years ago, we spent a lot of time looking at the best practices of each company. I think over that course of time we’ve been able to blend some of those practices into really understanding the locals market and not doing anything too drastic to our business model because the locals are very structured. They know what you’re doing on a daily basis, they see a machine move, they see table changes and they tell you about. They’re very vocal so we’re very cognizant of what we do in the locals market.

Do you have to gauge their reaction before you do something?
We’ve done a number of focus groups with our customers before we implement changes. Even for simple things like a new slot chair. We had two months of interviews and focus groups and questioning and having them try the chairs before we settled on buying new chairs.

Where do your locals come from? Are they predominantly from Spring Valley, or the west side of town?
There are about 10 ZIP codes encircling us that they’re basically coming from. Mainly it’s the southwest in particular, and west of us. They do come from further out, which is kind of surprising to some of us. They come here for the amenities, the restaurants, and this property has a good vibe to it, a good feel. It’s comfortable, the employees are friendly and I think that’s what brings the customers back.

Do the locals play specific games?
It was basically a video poker house for a number of years. We’ve tried to keep that variety but also introduce some of the newest and latest games, which seem to have been received favorably in the recent months.

You mentioned that the tourists often come as part of a group. What is the attraction of the property to them? Is it the proximity to the Strip or the value?
It’s all of those. Proximity is key, but also the value. We provide a great room value and a great food value in comparison to some of the Strip steakhouses and things. We’re probably nearly half the price of any of those. And the amenities, the theaters, the bowling alley and all the other things we provide give us a nice niche market.

What I’ve heard from most of the people I’ve talked to is that the ambience is more sedate than the Strip is and they like to be away from that even though they can take a taxi and get there in five minutes.

Is it the fact that we’re losing the value rooms on the Strip with the closing of first the Stardust and now the New Frontier? Do those properties closing help you at all?
To some degree. I think everybody is fighting for that market. I think there is a lot of opportunity in the next few years for us to gain the customers from those properties.

What was it like transitioning from Coast to Boyd?
It’s a long transition in the fact that Michael Gaughan left only last October. So over the course of those two years that he ran the properties, there wasn’t a great deal of change. But since then, we’ve been integrating some things here and there when it was the right time. We took a slow and deliberate approach to the process, feeling that nobody likes to be taken over, so to speak. I think we’ve introduced a lot of our Boyd style into the property and we continue to do so at a slow pace. Because these employees have been so loyal over the years, they deserve that approach.

Being a part of a big company comes with a lot of advantages for the employees. We try to give them new things that they will see as a positive benefit.

A lot of the employees were loyal to Mike Gaughan, and he was like a father figure to them. Are you trying to fill that role?
He’s got big shoes and it would be tough to fill them. What we try to do with our management style is we try to listen to the employees and address their issues quickly and make sure we’re giving them everything they need to do their jobs in a friendly environment to keep the guest coming back.

Do you have any plans for further expansion of this property?
Right now, we’re looking at the master plan of the property. There are a number of things that we feel we would like here or that may end up here, such as maybe another resort on the corner that is empty. But we’re underserved in our suites—we only have 60 suites out of almost 1,900 rooms—so we’ve talked about a future suite tower. But just because I’m asking for it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but we definitely could use that because we’re competing with the Palms and the Rio, but we don’t have the same room types that they do. So we’re hoping that somewhere down the road we’ll have some additional amenities like that.

By Roger Gros

Roger Gros is publisher of Casino Connection and editor and publisher of Global Gaming Business magazine, the industry’s leading gaming trade publication. Prior to joining Global Gaming Business, Gros was president of Inlet Communications, an independent consulting firm. He was vice president of Casino Journal Publishing Group from 1984-2000, and held virtually every editorial title during his tenure. Gros was editor of Casino Journal, the National Gaming Summary and the Atlantic City Insider, and was the founding editor of Casino Player magazine. He was a co-founder of the American Gaming Summit and the Southern Gaming Summit conferences and trade shows. He is the author of the best-selling book, How to Win at Casino Gambling (Carlton Books, 1995), now in its third edition. Gros was named “Businessman of the Year” for 1998 by the Greater Atlantic City Chamber of Commerce.

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