Once upon a time, swimming pools at casino resorts were wet, chlorine-scented places to cool off before you toweled dry and headed for the real entertainment.
Today’s casino resort swimming pools are red hot. You don’t just go there to cool off but to dance to the hottest tunes, mingle with hot, young singles and even hotter celebrities, and lose yourself in a torrid, but comfortable, tropical paradise, often with four-star cuisine.
They have names like the Encore Beach Club, Tao Beach, Bare at the Mirage, the Liquid Pool Lounge at City Center and the Rehab Pool Party.
Even in cold climates, it’s important for a casino resort to have a fabulous pool. From the heat of Las Vegas to the long nights of Finland (or Atlantic City), pools are an attraction in their own right. Pools have also become a multi-use attraction, often transforming into after-hours nightclubs.
Multi-Use Options
The newest is Steve Wynn’s Encore Beach Club and Surrender Nightclub, which opened at the end of May. The two-story cabanas and bungalows were added where the porte cochere was when the resort opened in 2008.
According to nightlife impresario and operating partner Sean Christie, it was built to operate 24/7, and to be a nightclub from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.
Surrender—a small, intimate club—opens onto the 60,000-square-foot Encore Beach Club. The cabanas and bungalows have balconies and terraces, private bathrooms and showers.
“It’s not quite a hotel room, but it’s as close as you can be, sitting on top of the pool,” says Christie. “We have spared no expense to make it the best bungalow and cabana by far.”
Guests enter a lush oasis featuring 40-foot palms bordering three-tiered pools. The deck in the center is like a small post-modernist Greek temple, dotted with chaise lounges, couches and day beds. For more privacy, 26 cabanas are equipped with refrigerators and flat-screen TVs. Eight two-story bungalows offer views of the Las Vegas Strip.
As you enter Surrender, you are greeted with spices for the eyes, including a handmade, sculpted snake—with an apple in its mouth as a light source—on the back bar. Sculpted statues called “divers” jump off the walls. It has a high ceiling and features light shows.
“It’s a high-end club,” says Christie. “More an intimate nightclub than an ultra-lounge. There is more nightclub-style seating, and you can dance on every bank in the space.”
He calls the beach club a “category changer.”
“I’ve been to all of them,” he laughs. “None compare to what we’ve built. It would be like comparing Wynn to other products. And that’s no surprise, because Steve Wynn designed and built this one, as well.”
DJs play music, and occasionally there will be live performances, as happened over the Memorial Day weekend premiere, when platinum star Ne-Yo, electronic music artist Kaskade and LMFAO all performed.
“It’s a very sexy crowd,” says Christie. They can be seen floating on day beds called “lily pads” in six inches of water. Each pad has a private safe. Loungers can order from a pool menu, or visit a beach shop stocked with everything from bikinis to suntan lotion. “We’ve really tried to have an all-encompassing space where you can live and stay, and have a first-rate pool party,” says Christie.
More Attractions, More Revenue
Hot and sexy it is, but like most new casino pools, the Encore has a hard-nosed raison d’etre: to make money by bringing more people to the property’s other attractions.
Christie notes that when you walk into the Encore’s pedestrian entrance, on your right is the classic American restaurant Society Café and on your left, Chef Marc Poidevin’s French-inspired Switch.
“During the summer the beach club will hold 2,400 and the nightclub has a capacity for 2,900, so think of the sheer volume. The location, in the retail area in the promenade between the Encore and the Wynn, is one of the driving forces of Encore,” says Christie, who projects attracting an additional 5,000–8,000 visitors.
“The customer we bring in is a great demographic, the 35-50 crowd. We are confident that will translate into more business for the rest of the casino. We are going to light up Encore!”
Increasing revenue was the idea when the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas reopened its popular Sunday Rehab “daylife” party April 18. The seventh-season premiere was attended by 4,000 partiers from all over the world, with entertainment headed by Wyclef Jean.
Robin Leach’s Vegas Deluxe blog called it “the biggest turnout for Rehab ever, thanks to season three of the Tru TV hit reality show Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel and the size of the hotel doubling since last summer.” The new season also unveiled the Skybar, which complements the pool party.
“We were the first to do a pool party and the first casino to open it to non-hotel guests,” says Phil Shalala, the resort’s chief marketing officer. “We saw our pool as a beautiful environment and an asset, and said we should make some money off it. It’s been an excellent revenue generator for us.”
The Rehab pool party is always held on Sunday. On Saturdays DJ pool parties take over. “We’ve got great music, the cabana element, and swim-up blackjack,” says Shalala. “We book high-level talent. We book celebrities. It becomes more of a daytime entertainment event rather than just a pool party with music. Paris Hilton was here last week. Vince Vaughn and Snoop Dog opened one year. We have a lot of different types of entertainment.”
The entertainment and music are all part of the winning formula, but most important is atmosphere, says Shalala.
“To open a pool with cabanas, chairs and nothing special about the environment won’t do. Here at our pool and cabana, we’ve got a sand-bottom beach pool, and we literally have beaches. A water slide runs through the pool. It’s an environment, an experience in itself. Design and architecture is exactly the key. The look and feel—the vibe.”
By any measure of success, Rehab is a hit. “We’ve seen growth in numbers and growth in revenue,” Shalala says. “Last year was the worst economy in the last 60 years. Rehab was up 30 percent. I don’t know anyone in this town who can say they were up 30 percent in anything. That’s how I measure success. Four weeks into the season and we continue to break records.”
Brand New
Jason Strauss, group owner and managing partner of the Venetian’s TAO Beach, measures success somewhat differently. “I don’t think of it as a way to create revenue,” he says. “The purpose is to create a brand extension for the nightclub and restaurant and create the ability to touch different people.”
TAO Beach, which opened three seasons ago, sits atop the TAO Asian Bistro and Nightclub. The weekly Sunday Sunset Sessions feature local, national and international house DJs. Saturday nights the beach club offer a dazzling pool light show, floating Chinese lanterns and 14-foot-tall fire columns.
TAO Beach’s lavish cabanas have HD plasma screen TVs, a galaxy of high-tech entertainment such as DVD Player/X Box 360 and full DVD/game library and iPod rentals along with low-tech luxuries like chilled towels and pampering by private masseuses. Asian-inspired day beds have mini-refrigerators.
All of this does increase occupancy for the TAO nightclub, agrees Strauss.
“We’re the only pool that is attached to a nightclub. We have a truly intimate space, and we went out of our way to create a unique environment.”
That includes more than $400,000 spent for Balinese plants. The TAO kitchen offers five-star cuisine, including, says Strauss, “the world’s best sushi and Kobe, which is a whole different level—compared to our competitors who are serving hamburgers.”
On Fridays, TAO does local-driven events. Saturdays, celebrities host events, and on Sunday afternoons TAO Beach has partnered with Beatport, the world’s largest electronic music downloading website, to provide international house music.
TAO Beach is a work in progress. “This year we did a million-dollar renovation by building five new cabanas, a new DJ booth and new furniture,” says Strauss. “I don’t think we will ever be satisfied. Each season we will learn something and do more.
“You have to stay relevant. You can’t just build it. You have to elevate the game. The formula is staying relevant and in tune with the customers, and reacting to their feedback on how to be better,” he says.
The Pool Boy
Don Brinkerhoff, founder of Lifescapes International, Inc., a Newport Beach-based landscape architectural firm, may well have invented the strategy of using swimming pools as money-makers on casino properties. He started his business 50 years ago, and began doing casino projects 25 years ago. He has designed landscapes for about 50 properties, including more than a dozen along the Las Vegas Strip.
“We’ve been doing fantasy landscapes ever since we started,” says Brinkerhoff.
A “fantasy landscape” includes waterfalls and exotic elements not normally seen in daily life. “We got the job to do the Mirage, which was the first new hotel in Las Vegas in 16 years. Wynn, our guiding light for 25 years, wanted a Polynesia-style hotel. That indicated that the pool should be lagoon-shaped with palms.”
Coconut palms don’t grow in Las Vegas, so they imported Canary Island palms.
“I said it would be a good idea to add simple cabana structures, 12 feet by 12 feet. They became so popular so that in our latest job, Encore, there are many cabanas. They are very sophisticated and are virtually buildings.”
Today, says Brinkerhoff, you wouldn’t install a pool without cabanas.
“The whole idea is to set up fantasy places where you can dispense with your belief that you are really in Vegas. You could be in Caesar’s Forum or Paris. Each one takes on a character unique to that hotel,” he says.
Pool cabanas often rent for more than the hotel rooms. “All the hotels now see the pool areas as profit centers. They sell drinks and food. They rent chaises,” says Brinkerhoff.
Brinkerhoff’s daughter, Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs, president and CFO of Lifescapes, notes that pool areas have evolved into significant parts of the property. “The casino operator looks how to maximize return. They figure out ways to energize the pool at night. They convert spaces for evening entertainment. At Encore the pool is used for nightclub extension. At Red Rock Casino and Spa in Summerlin (which Lifescapes also worked on) the recreation area, the Backyard, features nine pools and incorporates the Cherry Nightclub cocktail lounge, the TBones Chophouse and over 25 private cabanas. They are looking to maximize the area around the pool’s edge.”
Desert and Ocean Scenes
Red Rock was envisioned by Friedmutter Group Architecture & Design Studios as a place for low water use—without looking like a desert. “We wanted to show that drought-tolerant doesn’t have to be weeds and cactus, and can be an appealing resort environment,” says Brinkerhoff-Jacobs. “The pool area is like an amphitheater. The pool is lower and circular, and the decks are also circular and built up. We used artificial turf along the edge. You don’t have to mow it or water it.”
The intention in all such pool areas is to escape the everyday world and enjoy a beautiful resort setting. “Each of our projects has had a different personality,” she says.
At Harrah’s Atlantic City they created a tropical environment by enclosing the pool area with a controlled climate.
“We enclosed the pool area in the Borgata Atlantic City for the same reason. The Borgata’s pool is essentially a hothouse. The intention is to create a tropical garden destination,” she says. Daytime use for non-hotel guests is the trend among many casinos.
“The idea is to attract people who may not be staying in the hotel but want to be in the hotel’s environment. What operators do by adding these special additions is to extend the opportunity to have more guests,” says Brinkerhoff. And more income.
The pool’s shape doesn’t matter, they say, but there should be shallow areas for floating chaise lounges, allowing freedom of movement and the opportunity for a different experience. Sometimes active casinos operate in the pool areas.
This is true of the Eclipse pool area in Harrah’s Rincon Casino in San Diego County. Here, during the summer, the young and the tan dance to the hottest DJ music, or play blackjack dealt by bikini-clad dealers. Harrah’s ropes off this area for special events, such as the 50th anniversary of Playboy magazine celebrated in June.
Red Rock uses its pool areas as flex space, using movable venues to, for example, bring in live music for an evening, or host a convention or private party, reverting back to normal use in the daytime.
“People will think up creative uses that haven’t occurred to us if you provide a creative venue for them,” says Brinkerhoff.
