Return of the King: Elvis back at Westgate

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, March 8, 2015 | 3 a.m.

Las Vegas remains the land of the Elvis impersonator, or as these jump-suited performers are known, Elvis tribute artists — ETAs for short.

They seem to be everywhere, posing for photos on Fremont Street, conducing weddings at the Viva Las Vegas wedding chapel and tooling around in pink convertible Cadillacs.

Now Elvis is returning to the very building where he regenerated his career.

Westgate Las Vegas is building its latest attraction, and it’s straight out of the summer of ’69. The hotel where Elvis performed 837 consecutive sold-out shows is opening “Graceland Presents Elvis: The Exhibition, The Show, The Experience” on April 23.

The promotional material announcing the show proudly reminds that Elvis “performed over 600 sold-out shows” at the International and, later, at the Las Vegas Hilton. Yep, Elvis performed more than 600 shows. And more than 700, and more than 800.

What makes that 837-show run especially remarkable is Elvis defied “soft” market trends. I hear this all the time, even from strong-selling shows, that there are external events that negatively affect ticket sales. It’s the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, or Super Bowl weekend, or the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, or a lull in convention business.

But those trends never were a factor for the Presley shows (although he did benefit from the fact that the only way to see Elvis outside one-off arena appearances was in Las Vegas.) Also, there were far fewer shows in those days, far fewer hotels, and a lot less competition for the entertainment dollar.

But still: 837 is a monster number, likely never to be duplicated. Even top headliners such as Celine Dion and Britney Spears do well to sell 80 percent of tickets, and 75 percent is a strong-enough number. As one person connected to the booking industry told me, “If you’re selling 80 percent of the house, you’re not scheduling enough shows.”

At the moment, workers are assembling a 30,000-square-foot attraction to be filled with dozens of jumpsuits, high school yearbooks, motorcycles, cars, documents and jewelry. The former Elvis theater is being renovated to better reflect the venue when Presley was its headliner, with booths returned to the lower levels. (The showroom was converted to a proper theater to allow for Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Starlight Express.”) The 1,600-seat theater, which also has been home to Liberace, Wayne Newton and Barry Manilow, will be renamed the Elvis Presley International Showroom.

“When you close your eyes, you are going to think you are back in the International, listening to Elvis,” Westgate Resorts Chief Operating Officer Mark Waltrip said.

Still, questions remain about how strong the Elvis brand and the Elvis image are in Las Vegas. Officials with Elvis Presley Enterprises and Westgate founder David Siegel didn’t bother to do a market test of the Elvis Presley name. It’s just a shrug of the shoulders from those folks, who are banking that the Graceland West effort will attract the kind of steady business the “Star Trek Experience” drew before closing in September 2008.

The shuttering of “Star Trek” seemed to make sense at the time, as the Trek theme seemed to have played out, but the hotel has dearly missed the 300,000 annual visitors the show brought in during its decade-long run at the Hilton.

“We inherently knew, the minute we went to Graceland, how strong Elvis is,” Waltrip said. “When you talk to the employees who check the guests in, and ask, ‘Who are the Elvis fans?’ it is not an old crowd. The average age of a Graceland visitor is in the mid- to late-30s.”

Siegel also is a big Elvis fan. Siegel remembers first hearing that name in the mid-1950s and wondering, “Who would name their kid Elvis?”

Today, Siegel’s hotel hinges a large segment of its future on that name.

“Everybody knows who Elvis is,” Siegel said. “You can’t find anybody who doesn’t recognize the name Elvis Presley.”