Atlantic City told to add air service, hotel rooms

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Sure, it has 12,000 casino hotel rooms, two airports, a famous Boardwalk and 12 casinos. In the near future, it will have its own tunnel, too, as well as two megaresorts.

But what Atlantic City really needs to reach its potential is regularly scheduled nonstop airline service, lots more hotel rooms and a more aggressive approach to marketing itself, some of casino gambling's top CEOs told a conference this week.

More airline service would make the East Coast's gambling mecca more accessible to millions of people who live within 300 miles but who don't come because flying here is too much trouble.

Adding hotel rooms would allow casinos that now give most of their rooms away to their regular gamblers the option to offer them to the public at large instead, thereby creating new customer bases.

"It's a new concept," cracked Paul Rubeli, chairman of Aztar Corp. of Phoenix, which owns the Tropicana resorts in both Atlantic City and Las Vegas. "People are willing to pay for something. You don't have to give it away."

Rubeli's comments came during a panel discussion among CEOs at the Mid-Atlantic Gaming & Entertainment Congress & Expo. The event at the Atlantic City Convention Center attracted about 550 executives, regulators, vendors and others.

Donald Snyder, president of Las Vegas' Boyd Gaming Corp., which is building a $750 million resort casino in the marina district, said his company's project -- and a $1 billion project planned by Mirage Resorts Inc. next door -- will help Atlantic City lure people who don't visit now.

"New products grow markets. Expansions and renovations do not," Snyder said.

But the city must offer enough besides slot machines so potential visitors view a stay as more than a gambling junket, he said.

Phil Satre, chairman and CEO of Harrah's Entertainment Inc., which owns two Atlantic City casinos, said more airline service is needed.

Tiny Spirit Airlines is the only regular jet service operating at Atlantic City International Airport.

"We need to bring people directly in. Not in Philadelphia, not after three or four stops along the way," he said. "We're in the business of giving people time in front of table games and slot machines, not making them wait."

Atlantic City has 58 million people -- 42 million of them adults -- living within a 300-mile radius, Rubeli said.

Yet its market penetration is much lower than that of casinos elsewhere, in part because people have trouble getting casino hotel reservations if they're not regular players at a casino, Rubeli said.

Occupancy rates at the casino hotels routinely exceed 90 percent, with most of the rooms given as "comps" to gamblers.

"We've devoted most of the hotel rooms to serving the same 3 or 4 million people year after year," Rubeli said.

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