Palms and MTV keep that edge with Spring Break showcase

By John Katsilometes

Thursday, March 10, 2011 | 3:20 p.m.

Not to blithely throw ages into the mix, but some stats to know when considering this exercise in revelry called MTV Spring Break 2011 that just wrapped at the Palms:

• MTV is 30 years old, almost.

• The Palms is 10 years old, almost.

• Palms executive Jon Gray is 26 years old.

• Palms owner George Maloof is 46 years old.

• The 2,000 or so partygoers at the Palms Pool are mostly in their early 20s.

• DJ Pauly D … well, he’s ageless, as is his hairstyle.

What they all share is an undeniable need to be 1) hip and 2) edgy. Hip and edgy knows no age division, even for a resort that is somewhat aged by Vegas standards and a youth-driven cable channel that is hardly a sprightly coed.

Thus, the partnership of MTV and the Palms is a mutually beneficial romance, if only to remind fans of both entities that they are still very cool. Those who were booked to entertain the scantily clad but chilled pool inhabitants included Snoop Dogg, DJ Pauly D, Wiz Khalifa, Pitbull, Ne-Yo and Lupe Fiasco. The four-day party ended Wednesday and airs near the end of the month.

“This helps solidify our brand as a place where people come to have fun and enjoy themselves, and it promotes our pool,” Maloof said this week. He also added, in a distracted sort of way, “There are a lot of pretty girls around here.”

He’s such a businessman. But Maloof has put more thought into luring Spring Break to Vegas than populating the resort with babes.

“Well, obviously, we want to generate revenue,” he said. “We’ve budgeted certain numbers we wanted to achieve, which we’ve surpassed. We had a target, but we just wanted the whole package, and we’ve made what we expected to make, and the exposure has been great.”

Exposure in the media sense, he means.

As the hotel’s vice president of brand and development, Gray is charged with monetizing the hotel’s hip image. He did that by making use of a pool space that is typically inactive in the first weeks of March.

As he says, “We typically don’t open until mid-March, so we are opening up something that is usually closed to another 2,000 people over four days. What we’re bringing in is people who have been saving up for their room rates and spending money, but the reason we decided on these dates is that it is because traffic is slow this time of year.”

The Palms execs had long ago built a symbiotic relationship with MTV officials, dating to when “The Real World” taped at the hotel a decade ago. “The MTV Video Music Awards,” featuring a remarkable, quasi-live performance by Britney Spears, was broadcast from Pearl Concert Theater and various locales at the resort four years ago, and when Maloof and Gray devised a plan to bring the network’s famed Spring Break showcase to Vegas, they were virtually alone in pursuit.

Gray said he “bugged” MTV Senior Vice President Chris McCarthy for about three years before McCarthy finally took a tour of the hotel’s amenities.

“He didn’t tell me he was meeting with other hotels,” Maloof recalled. “But I do know he liked the space, the feel of it, and it was a great match.”

MTV took the lead on reaching an audience with just enough disposable income to spend a few nights in Vegas at a great room rate. Primarily, the network partnered with the StudentCity ticket Web site and its own social media platforms to promote the event.

“There was a lot of social buzz about it, on Twitter and Facebook, and that’s real promotion, people hearing it from their friends rather than us telling them,” Gray said. “And MTV is ingrained in culture now. And people are excited about it anyway, Spring Break, Las Vegas. For years it had been held on the East Coast, Florida or Mexico. There is just a great vibe about Spring Break in Las Vegas.”

It’s not been a perfect fit, however. Thousands of college kids “challenge” the Palms’ housekeeping staff, as the Spring Breakers often grubbily pile four to a room (at a rate of $79 per night, usually). The weather has been less than ideal, though Maloof says that “has not been an issue at all, they seem to ignore it.”

Maloof says that room rate is out of whack, too.

“That rate was way too low,” he said, laughing. “But I always think they’re too low. Everyone is tiring of me saying it, but they were too low.”

Maybe. But locals call that sort of rate “value.”

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow Kats With the Dish at twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.