Steve Wynn's Fair Share Concept

The Wynn Resorts quarterly earnings conference call was on Tuesday. The call is sometimes called The Steve Wynn Show by insiders because his straightforward answers can be very entertaining and educational.

Here's one tidbit from this week's call that I found interesting. It involves a concept that Wynn calls "Fair Share" that Wynn Resorts uses to judge how well they are doing:

"For those of you who really follow this, don't look at market share per se, look at fair share. We use that term, you can call it what you want. But you basically take how many units of slot machines or tables does a given operator have compared to the total in the marketplace, and then take a look at the share of the money that the person -- that the company has. If that ratio is better than 1:1, then you're a net receiver of the customers and you've sort of made a dorm out of your neighbor. If it's less than 1:1, then you're a dorm to your neighbor, and that's a negative fair share. We have been able to increase our fair share market penetration in the face of increased competition. It happened to us in Atlantic City years ago. We were the smallest place. But the more places came on, the more our premium over the average increased, and we're enjoying that again in Macau. It's a very important number, and it sort of tells you how good a job you are in delivering a good guest experience, a good customer experience that makes those people want to come back again and again and keep you as their favorite place."

You can listen to the conference call at Wynn Investor Relations, and read the transcript at Seeking Alpha.

Elton John brings Million Dollar Piano to Caesars

Elton John is returning to Las Vegas and Caesars Palace. A three year residency at The Colosseum will begin in September.

The Million Dollar Piano show is named after a custom piano built by Yamaha. Elton's previous Caesars Palace show The Red Piano ran for five years, from 2004-2009.

Elton John coming back is exciting news for Las Vegas. I was fortunate enough to receive free tickets to one of The Red Piano shows, and it was great. That show had some unique music videos projected onto huge screens behind the piano. Hopefully the new show will have some interesting visual elements like that.

Gallery Nightclub opens at Planet Hollywood

Gallery Nightclub opened last weekend at Planet Hollywood. Kourtney Kardashian hosted her birthday party on Friday and Cee Lo Green performed on Saturday. Holly Madison and Josh Strickland, Vince Neil and Carrot Top were among the other celebrities attending on grand opening weekend. Gallery is in the space formerly occupied by Prive.







Photos from Gallery Facebook.

Postage Stamp uses Las Vegas Statue of Liberty

The newest "Forever" stamps issued by the US Postal Service feature an American Flag and the Statue of Liberty. There's one small problem though. Instead of a picture of the original statue in New York, the Postal Service mistakenly used a photo of the replica statue in front of New York-New York hotel in Las Vegas.

Absinthe is a Smash Hit

I haven't mentioned the new show Absinthe at Caesars Palace very much on this blog. I really didn't know what to think of it when I first heard about it. It's billed as an "Adult Carnival" and takes place in a tent outside of Caesars.

The show seems very strange to me, but apparently it's amazing. It's getting great reviews from pretty much everyone. Las Vegas Weekly loved it. So did Vegas Chatter. Six out of eight reviews on Yelp are 5 stars, while the other two are 4 stars.

Paul Carr, the British guy spending a month in Vegas at a different hotel each night liked the show so much that he saw it twice and interviewed the host.

Ticket sales haven't quite matched the hype yet, but with EVERYONE loving Absinthe I'm sure word of mouth will take over eventually. Angel Porrino is also joining the cast this week, which will probably bring in the reality TV crowd.

I didn't think I would want to see Absinthe, but these great reviews are making me reconsider.