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Las Vegas Round-Up

For instance:

- Prospects for a long-awaited retail mall linking Mandalay Bay and Luxor. "Upscale retailers in America aren't looking to expand their store space right now," he noted, saying the planned mall is on "indefinite hold."

-A trend in which a growing number of the company's guests book their stays online. "It will only be more important as this company goes forward."

-The pressure to purchase new slots. "You always keep a fresh floor. That's what customers come to Las Vegas for."

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TRIVIA TIME: How much casino revenue did U.S. tribal casinos generate in 2000?

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STAR FACTOR: MGM Mirage executives take note: That five Five-Diamond Award recently earned by Bellagio might not be as lucrative as you hoped.

The current issue of The Economic Times reports that leading five-star hotel chains are likely to report a fall in profit margins because of a decline in worldwide travel.

"Hotels in metro cities depend on foreign travelers and are likely to be far more adversely affected than hotels in non-metros and smaller cities," the article said.

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BORDER WOES: Tightened security between the U.S. and Canadian border has damaged the economy of Windsor, Ontario, which the Toronto Globe and Mail reports is arguably the Canadian city hardest hit by the problem.

Forty-three percent of Canada's bilateral trade with the United States passes into southeastern Michigan, and 25 percent of it crosses the Ambassador Bridge linking Windsor and Detroit, the newspaper reports.

That's led to the loss of 1,100 jobs at Park Place Entertainment's Casino Windsor and the closure of a nearby bingo parlor that depended heavily on U.S. gamblers.

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TRIVIA ANSWER: Gambling revenue at the nation's tribal casinos increased 10.7 percent in 2000 to $10.6 billion, the Wall Street investment banking firm Bear, Stearns & Co. reports. Las Vegas casinos generated 2000 gambling revenue of $6.1 billion.

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QUOTABLE: "Disney World and Las Vegas became national destinations. Harvard could recruit from the West Coast, Stanford from the East. If adult children moved hundreds or thousands of miles from parents, families could still gather several times a year." - Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson writing in the magazine's Nov. 26 issue about the cultural changes spurred by the jet plane.

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