Corporate executives are usually considered suits without souls by the employees who work for them, but Stratosphere President and General Manager Arthur Keith wants to set the record straight: He cares.

The hotelier-turned-gaming operator is currently cultivating a culture of compassion at his north Strip property, starting with a recent series of company rallies at which Keith expressed his hope that a humble leadership team will unite with excited workers to bring the Stratosphere into the future.

“We want a place that’s fun and energetic and entertaining on the guest side, and the same thing needs to happen on our end of the house,” Keith said. “A big piece of it is how we lead, how we as leaders act around [employees].

“We can be the ego-driven, intimidating, uncaring, business-minded, numbers-crunching leaders that you sometimes can find in these big businesses, or we can be those that manage with heart. We manage with a great deal of personal humility and professional will. Having a humble leadership is something we’re very focused on. Our employees respond to that.”

Parent company American Casino and Entertainment Properties lured Keith from the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville to head the Stratosphere in July 2008, shortly after the property was purchased from industry veteran Carl Icahn. Keith quickly realized that the Stratosphere needed a boost of energy to keep it afloat.

“The Carl Icahn era was certainly very good for this property, because it took the property out of bankruptcy and added additional rooms and brought the property to where it’s at today, but Carl reached the point where he knew he was going to sell this property, so he stopped investing in it,” Keith said. “We were capital-starved, and there were certainly things that needed to be addressed from a maintenance issue. We came and immediately started addressing those things.

“What we’ve been working on since July is making sure we have as strong a leadership team as possible, and that we develop an employee culture and a sales and marketing culture that would be a great platform to build this company on going forward.”

Keith has a wealth of experience in both hotel operations and gaming, having graduated from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration and working at hotels before being hired by Station Casinos in Kansas. He further developed his knowledge of the casino industry during his time at the Venetian and the Rio. Now Keith hopes to draw on his years of experience in the Stratosphere’s next chapter.

“From a sales and marketing standpoint, this property needs to become more casino-centric, so growing our gaming base and our gaming customer base is something we’re very much focused on,” Keith said. “From a product and experience standpoint, our food and beverage programming, we’ve taken some steps…We’re going to do a lot of design work and make sure this property is as competitive as possible. We track our service scores. Our expectations are that we get better and better every year, so our service experience will grow here as well.”

As a value-oriented hotel, the Stratosphere is the perfect place for Keith to see middle-class travelers who still appreciate the spectacle of Las Vegas. He said another one of his goals for the future is to give those guests more bang for their buck—to keep them coming back for more.

“We built the hotel for Joe the gambler who’s looking to come to Las Vegas,” Keith said, laughing. “I love seeing people walk into this hotel, and you can tell they’re a first-timer to Las Vegas. Their eyes light up; they’re soaking it in. We can all take ourselves back to the first time we saw this city and were able to really experience it. We’re able to do that here for folks who are on a budget…They just really enjoy it and soak it in. I love that.”

By Caitlin McGarry