If you thought ultra-luxe casino spas were confined to the Las Vegas Strip, you once might have been right. But two Atlantic City resorts are opening lavish spas in what may be the opening salvos of (dare I say it) Spa Wars. From the AC Press:
For sheer magnificence, it may fall short of the domes of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and the Capitol in Washington, but it is spectacular in its own right.
There is nothing quite like it in the casino industry. Not even in Las Vegas.
Soaring 90 feet high, the huge glass-enclosed structure should help Harrah’s become, well, a more dome-ineering force in the fierce competition with next door neighbor Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa for the high-end gambling market.
“It will be a tropical paradise under a glass dome,” R. Scott Barber, senior vice president and general manager of Harrah’s Atlantic City, boasted Tuesday during a media tour of the new building.
This dome and the posh spa housed within it are the aesthetic centerpiece of a $550 million expansion that will transform Harrah’s into a more upscale casino hotel reminiscent of the glamorous gaming palaces of Las Vegas.
But don’t dare make the mistake of saying it will make Harrah’s more Borgata-like.
“This was pre-Borgata,” Harrah’s Eastern Division President J. Carlos Tolosa explained of the extensive planning that led up to the construction of the expansion project.
Scheduled to open Memorial Day weekend, the dome will feature a Red Door spa, pool complex, Jacuzzis and cabanas within 23,000 square feet of space. Palm trees and tropical plants imported from Arizona and Florida will also help create an oasis-like setting — an “Endless Summer at Harrah’s,” as the casino calls it in its promotional campaign.
Barber said the only thing that vaguely resembles the Harrah’s spa is the indoor “rainforest” of palm trees, flowers and cascading waterfalls under a 100-foot-high dome at The Mirage casino in Las Vegas. But he said Harrah’s dome has four times the square footage of the one at Mirage.
Harrah’s dome will be the largest spa within the Red Door chain and will “clearly be their best location in their company,” Barber said. There will be 23 treatment rooms, along with full-service nail and hair salons to pamper guests.
Harrah’s makeover will also include a new 620-seat buffet and six retail shops amid a wide corridor of glossy imported Italian marble floors. Those parts of the expansion project will open during Presidents Day weekend. When the dome opens, an expansive wall of windows in the buffet will overlook the pool complex to provide “waterfront” views.
The final piece of Harrah’s expansion is a 962-room hotel tower that will top out at 44 stories, or 525 feet high. Barber said the hotel will be New Jersey’s second-tallest building behind the 781-foot-high Goldman Sachs Tower in Jersey City.
Harrah’s, Borgata and Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort are all building new hotel towers that will add nearly 2,600 rooms. Borgata will open its new 800-room tower late this year, followed by the Harrah’s and Trump projects in 2008. Borgata’s tower will include a lavish “spa in the sky,” setting up a battle of the spas with Harrah’s.
Tolosa, though, maintained that Borgata and Harrah’s serve two distinctive markets. The luxurious Borgata attracts a younger crowd drawn to the gaming tables, while Harrah’s bread and butter is the higher-end slots gambler. Female slot players between the ages of 45 and 65 represent Harrah’s core customer, Barber said.
This is going to take some getting used to–if you asked me to imagine an “endless summer at Harrah’s,” the first thing I’d think of would probably be nickel progressives and buffet coupons. Seriously, I’d be curious to see what kind of marketing Harrah’s does to overcome their mid-market image.