Wednesday, July 19, 2000 | 11:11 a.m.
Despite the opening of a new rival at the Venetian hotel-casino last year, retail sales increased at the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, which continues to be the most successful shopping mall in the United States.
The Forum Shops reported averaging $1,400 in sales per square foot in 1999 compared with $1,200 the previous year. The Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian, meanwhile, averaged about $1,000 in its inaugural year.
Both malls specialize in "shoppertainment," the concept of making a purchase part of an entertainment experience. And, both are gearing for the opening of another shoppertainment entrant, Desert Passage, which will open Aug. 17 with the new Aladdin hotel-casino.
The Forum Shops use free animatronic shows depicting statues coming to life to entertain shoppers hourly, while the Canal Shoppes offer gondola rides in a waterway that winds through the length of the mall. Shoppers must pay to ride, but rides are often booked hours in advance, giving visitors an excuse to go to the stores while they wait their turn.
Representatives of the two malls and Nevada's largest shopping center, the Boulevard Mall, discussed their strategies for expanding their niches at a luncheon this month sponsored by the Las Vegas chapter of the American Marketing Association.
Fred Walters, general manager of the Grand Canal Shoppes, the 500,000-square-foot retail outlet owned by Venetian owners Las Vegas Sands Inc., said his operation has begun a new effort to attract local customers after spending its first year focusing on Venetian guests.
Walters said there's plenty of room for growth -- right now, about 96 percent of the visitors to the Grand Canal Shoppes are tourists while only 4 percent are Las Vegas residents. To increase traffic from locals, the Venetian property, which is managed by Forest City Management of Cleveland, has produced and distributed a packet of discount coupons for many of the stores at the mall.
Meanwhile, Maureen Crampton, marketing director of the Forum Shops at Caesars, which is owned and operated by the Simon Property Group Inc., Indianapolis, said the property already has a higher percentage of local traffic, which the mall will attempt to increase through the end of 2000.
Crampton said about 20 percent of the mall's 50,000 daily visitors are local residents. She attributes the Forum Shops' higher sales per square foot to the rebound in the Asian economy. She said Japanese tourists generally spend about three times what domestic tourists spend and the Forum Shops has implemented a marketing program specifically targeting Japanese visitors.
The Forum Shops, which opened in 1992, has average sales per square foot that is more than three times the national average of $350.
The Boulevard Mall, which was acquired in 1998 by General Growth Properties Inc., Chicago, owner of the Meadows Mall in Las Vegas, has a more traditional retail marketing approach because it doesn't have the entertainment elements offered by the two Strip-based malls.
Sue Brandt, marketing director of the Boulevard, said her property will press harder on holidays and on back-to-school sales with more electronic media ads. It also plans to beef up its marketing to Las Vegas' fastest-growing demographic, the Hispanic shopper, and its efforts on attracting tourists will focus on midmarket visitors instead of the high-end clientele that patronizes the Strip properties.
Brandt also said the Boulevard will expand its Internet marketing program, where a website already gets about 15,000 hits a week. She said the General Growth acquisition has made the mall stronger because the Meadows Mall was once a rival and is now a sister property.
All three marketing professionals said the opening of Desert Passage will expand the market in Las Vegas and likely won't chip away at the established outlets.
"It'll be one more place for visitors to see," Walters said, "and the people that visit us now will be expecting more from us."
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