There has been little new construction in the Laughlin area, which puts the Aquarius Casino Resort, and newly named General Manager Paul Hobson, in a strong position.

Hobson got his start in the gaming world at Caesars in Lake Tahoe as a financial analyst, where he spent four years as he worked his way up to manager of financial planning. From that point, he transferred to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas before taking a position with Primadonna Resorts, which at the time owned the three casinos in Primm. After 10 years in Primm, he is now heading to Laughlin.

American Casino Entertainment Properties recently completed an overhaul of the former Flamingo Laughlin. The renovation included everything from the casino carpeting to a revamping of almost 2,000 hotel rooms.

While the city faces the same struggles as the rest of the nation, Hobson sees several promising signs for the Aquarius, as well as Laughlin itself, including better entertainment, better accommodations and a better overall product along Casino Drive.

Hobson recently spoke with Casino Connection Publisher Roger Gros and Managing Editor Greg Jones, at the sister property, Stratosphere, to discuss what is happening in Laughlin.

Casino Connection: Do you see any similarities in the Laughlin market and the market in Primm, in that you’re not so much competing with Las Vegas, but in a way, you’re sort of overshadowed by Las Vegas?

Hobson: There’s definitely a lot of similarities between the two. In the trying times that we’re in right now, we compete with Las Vegas for the same guests. I was talking to a Las Vegas friend the other day, and we were talking about minutiae of being down in Laughlin, and he said, “Is Laughlin in as bad a shape as Las Vegas?” I said, “We must be, because you’re trying to steal all my players.”

So I think it’s fairly global; I think that Las Vegas has certainly become an appealing alternative to some guests that they might not have looked at before. And those are the people that were coming to Laughlin and Primm.

That being said, both of those markets, and particularly Laughlin, has a dynamic going for it—a different vibe—than Las Vegas. It’s a more casual, laid-back atmosphere. I think that the river itself is a nice attraction that people are looking for. Its more manageable size and scale, people don’t feel like they’re lost in the mix. There’s a lot more individuality there.

Is there anything you picked up in Primm that you think you can apply in Laughlin?

Another way they’re alike is that they were impacted early on by the development of Indian gaming in Southern California. My experience in Primm was operating lean-and-mean for a long time. I think Las Vegas is just learning that lesson now. I think that Laughlin learned that lesson over the course of the last decade. So there’s certain efficient ways of running that business and executing that model that is common between the two. It comes down to efficiency, but being able to deliver on the promise that you’re making to the guest.

The Arizona casinos were always a challenge for Laughlin when they first started.  Are you over that hump now? Do you have a steady base of Arizona players, or has that market been cut off?

One of the first things that I did when I got to Laughlin was to walk the properties and walk through the parking lots to see where the cars were from. It’s actually a pretty fair mix between California, Nevada and Arizona.

I would say that California would be the primary market. Arizona certainly, too, is very close in terms of where the customers are coming from. And then the locals from Nevada. I think a lot of those Arizona plates are coming from Bullhead City, so there is a local component to it as well.

But if you look at our outer markets, Phoenix is still a strong market for us where we focus a lot of our marketing and advertising.

There hasn’t been any new casino construction in Laughlin, but prior to your arrival, they completed the pretty extensive renovation of the Aquarius. What sort of edge does that give you in marketing the property over the competition?

Well, we do call it the New Aquarius. I think that it is a new property in the market; when American Casino and Entertainment Properties bought it in May 2006, it was branded Flamingo. And unbranding it was a convenient jumping off point for rebranding it Aquarius.

So, what we have is a really outstanding casino product with very fresh equipment, cool lighting features, nice casino bars, great seating and that outside lighting element that you don’t see in a lot of casinos. It opens up to the river. Very comfortable, but yet accessible, casual atmosphere. We finished remodeling all 1,907 rooms in December; we’re going for an accessible, luxurious experience. So we got flat-screen TVs; we have granite countertops; we got comfortable furniture; pillow-top mattresses: just a really nice feel.

Right now we’re working on the swimming pool, which happens to be on the roof of the facility. It’s kind of a neat feature overlooking the river. We’re bringing that up to the standards that we’ve established in the casino and in the rooms to really create Laughlin’s only resort experience.

Have you been able to expand your market? I know they were talking about getting kind of a younger crowd. I don’t know if the younger crowd has arrived in Laughlin.

You see seasonally a lot of difference between the clientele. Over the winter, we have a lot of snow birds, retired folks that are spending the winter in Laughlin. And that’s a great customer base for us. In the summertime we’ll move into more of the boaters, the people that are there for the river, for the lake, and that’s a younger group. Certainly they’ll feel comfortable in our property as well. We have a Splash Cabaret with live music and dancing, that type of thing. We’re really going to try to promote that as sort of a club environment and atmosphere.

To your point, we do need to start developing that next generation of customer that will be comfortable in Laughlin and will want to come there for the various attractions that we have.

As I recall, they were offering some B-level entertainment—not the top-of-the-line, but still enough that it would attract baby-boomers and the younger generation.

We’ll certainly take our shots where we can. We have a 3,500-seat outdoor arena, which limits the seasons that we can use it. It’s a springtime, fall-time type of a deal for Laughlin.

The first show we have coming up this season is Montgomery Gentry, which is a big country act, which we expect to do very well with. That’s not a C-level act; it’s up there.

We’ll take the opportunities where we find them. There’s obviously a lot of variety in the entertainment that’s accessible to our customers. We need to look for acts that make sense for our venue for the season and for our guests. We typically do pretty well with country.

How about the city-wide events? Are they still planning those type of things through the tourism bureau? Certainly the River Run and some of the other things that they’ve done have been big attractions.

Yep, we sure do, we get together as a group. The general managers and the marketing directors of the casinos down there get together to brainstorm ideas for various events.

There’s some funding available from LVCVA, and we try deploy those community-wide to have the greatest impact. It is, just like everything else, getting to be a tougher sell on certain weekends, on certain events. But that is an important part of what we do down there: marketing Laughlin in its entirety as a destination.

When times are tough, sometimes employees are asked to deliver the same level of customer service, but there are sometimes less people around to do that, which doesn’t always lead to the happiest group of employees. How do you keep everyone on the same page and focused on the overall mission of delivering the service that people are expecting?

Well, I think that that is a dynamic that can come about if the employees aren’t engaged. If they don’t understand what it is that we’re trying to achieve and why we’re trying to achieve it, there might be a little of disenfranchisement on their part.

I haven’t seen that at all at the Aquarius. The employees are very engaged and engaging when you walk across our casino floor. The people who are working are making eye contact with you, they’re saying hello, they’re giving you a nice, comfortable feel. They understand that there are fewer customers in the market right now and that makes each customer that comes through a little bit more precious, a little bit more valuable.

I’m very happy with the way that everybody is responding in these difficult times, from the line staff to the management: looking for ways to do more with a little bit less. Honestly, I have more problems with employee issues when they’re not busy than when they are. They seem to be happiest when they’re busy. For a lot of the positions, if you’re staffed well, their toke rate is where it should be and that makes the people who are there happy.

The employees in Laughlin are like the employees down South; they have kind of a natural friendliness to them. And at Aquarius, you’ve got a lot of the old Flamingo employees, going back for many, many years in that property.

Absolutely. I think a lot of that has to do with processes, and not necessarily being process-driven, but being people-driven. I think that, by and large, they’re more comfortable dealing with folks on an individual level than dealing with tasks that they have been assigned to accomplish.

Most periods they can take the time to have a bit of a conversation with somebody they recognize on the slot floor, or when somebody comes up to the table game, and it’s somebody that you recognize—a dealer who actually greets them by name, that type of dynamic. It’s partially because of the community that we’re in, with a lot of the play coming from Laughlin and Bullhead City. The people that are on the other side of the table are their neighbors, and they treat them like that. And the people that are coming from the outside of the market get treated like their neighbors, too. So, it’s definitely a nice dynamic.

By Casino Connection Staff