I’ve got an article in the Las Vegas Business Press today that elaborates my earlier thoughts on the Las Vegas business travel flap:
At the height of an unprecedented national crisis, a group of American leaders traveled to one of the countrys most expensive tourist destinations, where they set about the business of righting the ship of state. There were plenty of distractions in their decadent surroundings, and many in the group gambled nightly.
These were not banking executives secluding themselves at Mandalay Bay to salvage their assets or develop a plan for mitigating their toxic loans. No, this was the Second Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia from 1775 to 1777 and, responding forcefully to British provocations, created the basis for the United States of America.
Philadelphia then was one of the colonies largest and most cosmopolitan cities and the delegates to the Congress availed themselves of its numerous social activities. Thomas Jeffersons diary notes his exact losses at the backgammon tables during the weeks that he was writing the Declaration of Independence.
Faced with calamity for their countrymen and personal ruin if they failed, the delegates chose to meet in a city, not an isolated rural town with no temptation. They knew that while their business was important, it didnt demand complete self-sacrifice.
Todays fiscal leaders, who had been rebuked into forsaking corporate meetings in Las Vegas, should heed the example of our Founding Fathers. Theres no reason that disciplined executives and employees can’t take care of business during the day and have some fun at night.
Maybe that last line is the key to a new ad campaign for Las Vegas. “Las Vegas, the metaphorical mullet. Business up front, rock and roll in the back.”