California Hotel & Casino Brings in Loyal Hawaiian Customers

28 October 2002

“…Situated on the edge of downtown, three miles northeast of the glitzy Strip and three blocks from the city's secondary gambling district, Glitter Gulch, the California offers little in the way of location. It doesn't have a health spa, a Starbucks or a single man-made water feature, not even a swimming pool. There is no lounge--hence, no lounge acts--on the premises either, nary a magician, showgirl or faded crooner to distract visitors from the business of betting. If contemporary Las Vegas is a smorgasbord for the senses, the `Cal’ is strictly meat-and-potatoes, a Holiday Inn with slot machines.

“What the California Hotel does have is a customer base of unparalleled loyalty. Its 781 rooms are almost always occupied. The typical guests, men and women in their late 60s, check in once every other month and stay at least four days. Ignoring the novelty of other venues, they eat, sleep and bet a tidy bankroll of several hundred dollars (more than typical Vegas visitors) almost exclusively at the Cal, where the food, casual dress code and laid-back dealers remind them of home. These devoted patrons hail not from the Golden State, as the hotel's name might suggest, but from Hawaii, a spot that seems far removed from Vegas, both aesthetically and experientially.

“But for reasons both cultural and economic, Las Vegas is the top travel destination for Hawaiian tourists, a preference the California Hotel's management has carefully cultivated for almost three decades. Each year, nearly a quarter-million passengers make the five-hour trans-Pacific flight from Honolulu to McCarran International Airport--a number equal to one-fifth of the Aloha State's population.

“…Along with the surfeit of Hawaiians on holiday in this desert oasis, thousands of Islanders have made Sin City their home during the last decade, a period in which Hawaii's economy flagged and Vegas' flourished. Some estimate that the Pacific Islander population in metropolitan Las Vegas is as high as 80,000 (out of the approximately 1.4 million residents counted during the 2000 census). The migration has been both steady and visible enough that many Hawaiians refer to Las Vegas as `The Ninth Island,’ a catchy appellation coined by a Hawaii-born Army officer who started a magazine for expatriate Islanders after he retired there in 1996. It also has spawned a boom in southern Nevada hula schools, lei-making contests and a seemingly endless array of Hawaiian food and music.

“…Inside the California's casino, Islanders who have never been anywhere on the mainland besides Las Vegas sit raptly before banks of video poker machines with Hawaiian-themed names such as Shaka Five Way, Diamond Head and No ka 'oi (The Very Best). Year after year, Asian Pacific alumni of high schools on Maui and the Big Island attend their class reunions in the hotel's O'hana and Maile banquet rooms, their organizers having assumed that they'll get a better turnout there than in Hawaii.

“Indeed, Las Vegas is such a draw for Hawaiian tourists that one of Honolulu's oldest travel agencies often tacks side trips to Vegas onto its escorted tours of other popular mainland destinations.

“…In return for its Hawaiian visitors' fidelity, the California Hotel's parent company, Boyd Gaming Corp., co-sponsors a two-day Lei Day festival on an asphalt parking lot adjacent to the hotel every May. Lei Day, the Polynesian equivalent of May Day, is a big deal in Hawaii. Children celebrate the occasion with elaborate school pageants where they crown a Lei Day queen and her court, while adults compete in lei-making contests and distribute garlands of jasmine, ginger and orchids like valentines.

“…In both Las Vegas and Hawaii, the California Hotel is recognized as the place `where people from paradise play ... and stay,’ in the words of Boyd Gaming's advertising staff. But it's hard to say which came first, the hotel or the tendency of Islanders to vacation in Las Vegas. Either way, it's fair to say that the level of tourist traffic from Hawaii to Vegas would not be nearly what it is today if the hotel's founder, a veteran gaming operator named Sam Boyd, had been more successful with his original plans for the property.

“…Of their long allegiance to the California Hotel, several longtime customers say they like staying somewhere where they can eat their customary cuisine and don't have to worry about looking out of place…”