MGM Resorts International said it was reopening The Mirage on Aug. 27, leaving the casino company with just one Las Vegas Strip resort – Park MGM – still on the sidelines.
In a statement Friday, MGM said the reopenings of its casino portfolio in six states have been slow and thoughtful. MGM closed its properties in mid-March due to the spreading coronavirus pandemic.
In Nevada, gaming was allowed to reopen on June 4 after a 78-day shutdown. MGM reopened just three of its nine Strip-area properties that weekend and has slowly rolled out the remaining resorts, all operating under state-mandated health, safety, and cleaning guidelines, as well as capacity limits and social distancing protocols due to COVID-19.
The Mirage, which has 3,000 hotel rooms, will have limited amenities. Its showroom, home to the Beatles-themed Cirque du Soliel show, will remain closed. MGM had been accepting room reservations at the property starting in late August.
During a quarterly conference call last month, MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle said he wasn’t sure The Mirage or Park MGM would reopen. He said, however, he couldn’t imagine a scenario where the properties were closed for the rest of 2020.
“Reopening The Mirage allows us to bring many more of our employees back to work, which is critical in the recovery of our community,” Hornbuckle said Friday.
Tourism and gaming sources said MGM had been holding out Park MGM as a potential host hotel for the National Hockey League if Las Vegas had been selected as one of the two locations for season’s restart and playoffs. However, a surging number of COVID-19 cases in Las Vegas caused the NHL to select Edmonton, Alberta as one of the two “bubble sites” along with Toronto.
In addition to Park MGM, the company’s Empire Casino in New York is still closed with no scheduled reopening date.
Visitation remains down in Las Vegas due to a lack of airline flights and the cancelation of numerous conventions and business conferences. Hornbuckle said MGM Resorts has nearly 3.7 million square feet of convention space at its Las Vegas resorts, with diminished bookings in the third and fourth quarters.
He said the convention activity could be down during the first three months of 2021, which includes business lost by the cancelation last month of January’s Consumer Electronics Show.
On the Strip, Caesars Entertainment still has three properties closed – Cromwell, Planet Hollywood, and Rio while it has kept the hotel at the Linq Resort closed, but the casino and other amenities are open.
Las Vegas Sands is not accepting mid-week room reservations at the Palazzo.
Howard Stutz is the executive editor of CDC Gaming Reports. He can be reached at hstutz@cdcgaming.com. Follow @howardstutz on Twitter.
