Crazy week at ECG. The big news was the plan for major changing in horse racing and Atlantic City. The plans seem major, but they’re just plans and this is coming from the government, so I’m taking a wait and see while watching how things unfold.
This week will be the beginning of significant changes to ECG. I’ve been wanting to change the layout for a while, and that will happen in the next two weeks which mean that content will be slowing down and things will likely get (more) funny looking.
In this time I’ll explain why I’m welcoming the New BetRevolution.com to be my new sportsbook sponsor. It’s almost football season! Here’s the fun from the past week.
Wynn and Encore are finally allowing you to access information for your Red Card online. Of course, there is no noticeable place to find this on the Wynn website. You will find your access point at the upper right corner of the reservations page.
Since you now know how to find the red card page, you’re about 1/3 of the way through the process.
Now you have to spend about 10 minutes registering for an account. The process is annoying, but once you register and confirm you now have access to Red Card info you once had to call Las Vegas to get.
You’re about 66% done now and the rest is fun. You can now see what the Red Card has for you. You can check the following:
“My Promotion” - Latest offers available to you. I have room offers and early booking offers. I’m sure this will be different for everyone.
“My Account and Profile” – Address, Email, Password updating. Access to all of your account info. This is good to check. The person at the Red Card desk entered a wrong letter in my email address and street address as well so I never got offers.
“Contact Wynn Las Vegas and Encore” – Find out more and contact Wynn. Easy access to all Wynn numbers
“My Casino Account” – Player Information. You can apply for credit or check your comp dollars.
“Reservations” – Room, Dining, Shows, Other. This is an excellent and easy way to plan out a trip. The restaurant reservations have enough detail to never have to go to the main website.
Overall Wynn’s online rewards system may not be the most robust and may be a pain to set up, but it’s once you are into the system everything is set up nicely.
I’ll be bookmarking this page so I never have to hear Steve Wynn talk to me again or the music in the background. Everything I could want for a trip to Wynn is located on the Red Card page.
Do yourself a favor – spend the 10 minutes or so setting yourself up. Bookmark the page. Never deal with the rest of the Wynn website. Or you can go to wynncore.com and enjoy that.
The big news this week is split between the World Cup and Wynn Las Vegas tacking a $20 resort fee on to their standard room rates. They must be ashamed about this because they’re hiding the fees in their terms and conditions and not clearly disclosing the fees. I have to think this is illegal. If so, this is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
Wynn added a $20 resort fee to their standard room rates. By way of these resort fees Wynn Las Vegas has, in essence, raised standard room rates by about 10% based on a check of rates on their website. Props to Vegas Tripping for being the first place where I saw the information.
Here is the official statement from Wynn Resorts:
In an ongoing effort to enhance our guests’ resort experience, Wynn Las Vegas and Encore has implemented a $20 resort fee to all resort room reservations. Responding directly to extensive customer feedback, the resort fee will offer value to customers with a bundling of the most sought-after amenities. Effective June 10, 2010, the mandatory resort fee will be applied to all resort rooms. The daily fee will provide guests with the following amenities during their stay:
Complimentary access to the fitness center (a value of $30 per person/per day)
Complimentary in-room Internet access (value of $13.99 per day)
Complimentary local, domestic long distance and toll free calls
Complimentary printing of boarding passes
Ultimately, if people are willing to pay resort fees than hotels will charge them. That’s how supply and demand works. It’s interesting to see that hotels are raising resort fees, but not room fees. I have to think this is probably because they keep 100% of the resort fee, while travel agents and booking sites (orbitz, etc) take a percentage of room fees.
I’m sure that Wynn Las Vegas thought long and hard about adding the $20 per night resort fee while the market is over-saturated with rooms. However, most rooms available aren’t on par with Wynn Las Vegas. From what I’ve read this doesn’t seem to be scaring most in the “luxury” travel market. In a good economy rooms at Wynn would be more money anyway.
This doesn’t encourage me to stay at Wynn but I’ll never say never. As always when I travel I’ll do price comparisons for where I want to stay. Hopefully, all resort fees will be disclosed when I look next so I don’t have to strain to do the math. I don’t want to have to deal with fighting non-disclosure.
I’ll share my new room rate math next week. One word – OBNOXIOUS.
The Encore Beach Club opens this week to a lot of fanfare. I thought the Wynn complex was stuffy when it first opened, but on my past two trips I didn’t find that to be the case. In fact, I had a great time I had a great time gambling at Encore in December.
I don’t get too giddy with excitement when new joints in Las Vegas open, but there’s been a lot of people following it. Here are my favorite places to get information about the opening of the Encore Beach Club as it happens.
Vegas Tripping (where the picture below is from, thanks!) here and here and here.
There has been coverage everywhere, including the New York Times and Entertainment Tonight.
The Encore Beach club looks very well done. Props to those covering for making a contrarian like me excited. I’m sure it won’t be long before the Jersey Shore wannabe’s start making their move from Rehab and Wet to the EBC, but I’m sure that will be part of the fun.
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