- Resorts World Las Vegas has announced a June 24, 2021 opening date.
- The property is owned is Genting Malaysia and is on the long dormant site once occupied by the Stardust Hotel & Casino.
- The Resorts World Las Vegas website has started taking reservations in-house and through Hilton Hotel call centers.
The newest Las Vegas mega-resort has announced an opening date of June 24, 2021. That’s when Resorts World Las Vegas will open to the general public. The $4.3 billion USD property will feature 3,500 rooms that will operate under the banner of three Hilton Hotels (NYSE: HLT) affiliated brands–Hilton, Conrad and Crockfords. The 230 room Crockfords is the most interesting of the trio–the brand operates under Hilton’s LXR resorts marquee and will be the first located in the United States. The blurb on the Hilton website describes the LXR properties as “a luxury collection of distinctive hotels and resorts offering singular service and local experiences”. The Las Vegas Crockfords will be one of only eight properties in the world operating under the LXR brand–the others are in Japan, the Seychelles, Santa Monica, CA, Anguilla, London, Dubai and Turkey.
For the city of Las Vegas, it’s a long time coming. Resorts World will be the first new Strip property to open in more than a decade–since The Cosmopolitan debuted on December 15, 2010. The property at 3000 South Las Vegas Boulavard has been dormant since the Stardust Resort & Casino closed on November 1, 2006. Boyd Gaming–owners of the Stardust–had planned to build a ‘next level’ property named Echelon on the site but the ‘Great Recession’ and meltdown of the Las Vegas real estate market put the kibosh on that. Boyd Gaming would eventually sell the unfinished project to the Genting Group in 2021. Sometime between now and Resorts World’s opening date I’ll give you a more detailed history of the property including the aborted Echelon project.
Resorts World Las Vegas also faced several delays in construction since groundbreaking in 2015. At one point, there was a good deal of skepticsm among Vegas Valley longtimers that the property would ever be finished. Fortunately, Resorts World wasn’t destined to join the lengthy list of Las Vegas casinos that failed prior to opening. Construction crews continued working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and since it started to become evident that the project would be completed it has generated considerable excitement in Southern Nevada. In the press release announcing the opening date, Resorts World Las Vegas President Scott Sibella expressed his excitement at the impending debut:
“After years of planning and constructing this monumental property with some of the most innovative partners in the industry, Resorts World Las Vegas will redefine the hospitality standard in Las Vegas with unmatched dining and entertainment, more variety of hotel accommodations than anywhere else on the Strip, and the city’s most progressive technology. We are filled with gratitude and excitement as we approach our opening this June and hope to play a role in Las Vegas’s rebound after what has been an incredibly challenging year for the destination and greater hospitality industry.”
Sibella had additional comments in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
“We always said we’re going to open this summer and on budget and I’m happy to say that will happen.”
“We’ve been optimistic that things would get better (in Las Vegas) and the news we’re hearing is really great for us and we hope by the time we open on June 24, everything may not be back to normal but at least close to getting past this pandemic”
Sibella indicated that 95% of the property would open on June 24 including hotel rooms and suites, more than 40 food and beverage outlets, 70,000 square feet of retail space and a 117,000-square-foot casino. Resorts World will also create 5,000 new jobs upon opening including 500 at the managerial level. Sibella explained why the June 24 opening date was chosen:
“We wanted to get open as quickly as we could. We never stopped building through this pandemic. We were always committed to getting this property open this summer, but we felt really that it was so important to us to get open by the Fourth of July because we really think this is going to to be the biggest Fourth of July the city has seen in a long time, especially with all the positive news we all are hearing.”
“So we selected this date knowing that it would give us a little time to prepare for the Fourth of July.”
The only parts of the property that won’t be finished on opening day: the 5,000 seat concert and entertainment venue and the linkage to the Las Vegas Convention Center via Elon Musk’s underground transit system known as the Boring Company.
We’ll have plenty of coverage of Resorts World Las Vegas between now and opening day. Earlier today, Resorts World Las Vegas dropped a nearly 2 minute commercial featuring a slew of big name entertainers. Based on this effort, Resorts World could have a transformative effect on the city:
At the time of publication, James Murphy has a long position in HLT.
