Shore bets pay off

Atlantic City has played its cards right in marketing to young adults

By Tara Nurin
Philly EDGE Correspondent

Monica Moore and her boyfriend, Chris, couldn’t believe their good fortune. After gambling for six hours in Atlantic City, they were “up” at the blackjack table and they wanted to celebrate. Normally a frugal couple, the 20-somethings from Camden County quickly agreed to spend some of their winnings on dinner at a restaurant in one of the 11 (at the time) casinos in the Jersey resort city.
But that’s when their luck ran out.
“We take a walk down the boardwalk and we stop at Caesars. We figure we can get a good meal at Caesars, right?” Moore recalls. “Well, the only restaurant -- besides the buffets -- that was open was Planet Hollywood. So he’s up 800 bucks and we end up having a dinner from paper sunglass-shaped menus. It was ridiculous.”
Moore’s dining dismay happened more than two years ago and she’s happy to report that now she can go to Atlantic City and find plenty of good food; not to mention shopping, dancing, concerts, and bars.
“Now there are lounges where you can go have a drink, nice restaurants, and they’re getting better (live) music than they do in Philadelphia,” Moore says. “Before, A.C. was this dirty place you just went to gamble. You’d see people sitting at the machines in sweatpants and uncombed hair, and now people dress up. They look nice. I think more young professionals feel more comfortable hanging out and spending time instead of little old ladies going to spend their pensions.”
“There was an understanding that we needed to reinvent Atlantic City to attract a new demographic,” Jeffrey Vasser, executive director of the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority explains.
“We were always the home of – and there’s nothing wrong with these people – Don Rickles, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones. They don’t appeal to a 20-something group. Staind does. (Casinos realized) entertainment that appealed to the younger set was the way to attract players into this market. These people are our future.”
For Atlantic City, the future is now. A.C. welcomed a record number of visitors last year, as millions of playas in their 20s and 30s rolled into town to do more than roll some dice.
They checked out the Borgata, A.C.’s hip, three-years-new casino, jammed full of hot clubs and cool décor. They strolled The Quarter at the Tropicana, where in a few busy hours, they could catch an IMAX theater movie, buy a crystal-studded dog collar, sample exotic vodka at Red Square then groove out to live soul music at Kenny Gamble’s The Sound of Philadelphia restaurant. They shopped Hilfiger and Ann Taylor outlets at the outdoor The Walk, scoped celebrities at Jay-Z’s 4040 Club, and caught musicians at House of Blues, Boardwalk Hall, or one of many other casino performance venues.
“Now there’s a different vibe there. There’s a different environment,” says 33-year-old Matt Shore, of Philadelphia. “For me it ends up being a destination point where you can go and relax and unwind. Go to a restaurant, go to a dinner, go to a nightclub. The gambling ends up being an afterthought.”
The crazy part is none of this was possible three years ago.
Jeff Vasser calls it “The Borgata Effect.”
“The Borgata demonstrated that there is a market for younger, well-off groups of people for Atlantic City,” he explains. “They were not price sensitive and they wanted the finest that we had to offer. And here comes Borgata with a beautiful room, a beautiful product, world-class chefs and one of the hottest nightclubs in the region. … They offered entertainment and this caught on with everybody.”
The Borgata, the first new A.C. casino in 13 years, opened in the spring of 2003 with a sexy, splashy event co-sponsored by Maxim, which immediately set the tone for the place. Aiming for an audible “wow” factor, owners hired the world’s top designers to decorate the inside and wisely spread gambling alternatives like boutiques, restaurants and lounges liberally throughout the floor, then set their prices accordingly. The press breathlessly hailed the new casino as the East Coast coming of Las Vegas.
And the gamble paid off -- for the Borgata, and for everybody else.
“I think the Borgata opening up in this market is the best thing that ever happened to Atlantic City,” says competitor Jay Snowden, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Showboat hotel and casino.
“There were a lot of naysayers who said that Atlantic City was a market that couldn’t attract younger customers and couldn’t attract New York customers, and Borgata turned that thought on its head and proved it wrong.”
Now, places like Showboat are continuing to prove it wrong. Last July, the House of Blues franchise opened a restaurant, live performance venue, bar, casino wing and a private club (the first in A.C.) at the Showboat, and Snowden says it’s already brought 25 percent more “under-40” customers to his property.
“We said, ‘Let’s bring in a brand that we know appeals to a younger customer to bring in people to come to the Showboat that would otherwise never come to the Showboat,’” Snowden says. “And it’s working.”
Adding to the momentum, Snowden says, are other efforts to target the younger demographic, like more contemporary and louder music on the casino floor, as well as acquisition programs (those reward programs players can sign up for) that award prizes like I Pods and trips to House of Blues clubs around the world, instead of the tired and traditional gaming-based prizes. He says the program, which is a good way to measure the number of new visitors, has grown 30 percent this year.
AC marketing gurus also gauge the city’s success by pointing out that over the past few years, hotel room sales and the quantity of people arriving by car have both increased, thereby outpacing the buses carrying the geriatric slots players, who were, for several decades, the lifeblood of Atlantic City.
The national poker craze has improved their hand.
“All of a sudden there are these great poker tournaments that are attracting these younger people who have discretionary income and they’re coming in at a million miles an hour,” says Vasser.
“Poker’s also been successful with women,” he continues. “Borgata recently had an all-women poker tournament and it was not cheap.”
The success of that tournament proved that if you deal it, they will come. And if you build spas and boutiques, plus lady-friendly clubs and restaurants, even more will come.
“Sixty-six percent of our market is either women traveling in pairs or women making the travel decision,” Vasser says. “We want to market to women.”
He’s doing this by promoting girlfriend getaway weekends, bachelorette parties, and packages for high-end spas like bluemercury and Elizabeth Arden, on top of all of the more sophisticated relaxation and entertainment possibilities. It’s appealing to hordes of grateful young women, whether they come to A.C. for pleasure or for business.
“Before the Borgata and The Quarter, guys went to Atlantic City for a conference, then after they went to gamble and to the go-go bars,” says Moore, who meets prospective clients in Atlantic City about once a month as part of her job as sales director for an engineering firm.
Now, she’s relieved that, “it’s definitely more female and young person friendly, where a young professional can have an opportunity to entertain a client without it being seedy.”
And while there’s no doubt that “gentleman’s clubs” still dot the landscape, they’ll be upstaged even more as time progresses. Ultra high-end shops like Burberry, Gucci and Louis Vuitton will be unveiled this summer when The Pier at Caesars opens, along with The Continental and Budakkan. Stephen Starr’s latest epicurean palaces will have to compete with planned restaurants by Wolfgang Puck and Bobby Flay, both opening this year at the Borgata. Harrah’s and Taj Mahal have both announced major expansions, and Snowden, of Showboat, while declining to get specific, promises tantalizingly, “We’ve got some pretty cool stuff coming down the pike.”
This pleases Monica Moore, who says lately, her friends keep trying to talk her into a late-night drive down the shore.
“There’s always the trip, you’ve been drinking for a little while, 2 a.m., ‘Let’s go to Atlantic City.’ There’s always something to do,” she laughs.
Which means, more and more, Atlantic City is delivering what it promises. In 2003, in recognition of the need to revamp its image, the Convention and Visitors Authority changed its tagline to “Always Turned On,” which was recently named the third best marketing slogan in the country by taglineguru.com.