I know you're going to be shocked, but the new Rio has been a fail so far
Picture this:
A new Vegas hotel gets built in the 1990s. The rooms are large. It has a party "Mardi Gras" type atmosphere, with ongoing shows in the casino, and even an innovative floating "show in the sky" moving along the ceiling.
People like the concept. It's fun and interesting. They're willing to travel off-strip and over I-15 in order to visit or stay there.
Then the years pass by. It gets bought by Caesars, which neglects it, and lets the rooms get rundown and much of the facilities in disrepair. Eventually the free in-casino shows are shuttered, and the show in the sky is removed. It becomes nothing but a worn, older property with no real theme, and an undesirable location. At the same time, Vegas becomes increasingly location-focused, where every property in or near center strip succeeds, while everything else struggles.
You run a company which has no prior gaming experience. Do you buy this hotel?
And if you're dumb enough to do so, do you compound the mistake by keeping the existing tainted branding, while NOT bringing back the elements which people enjoyed in the first place?
That's what happened with the new Rio.
It was bought for a lot of money ($516 million) by a company called Dreamscape. For some reason, they did zero market research (or if they did, it was done poorly), and it was not discovered that the Rio brand now has a negative connotation, due to the decades of Caesars neglect. As most tourists don't closely follow Vegas news, they hear "Rio" and assume it's still the same shithole under Caesars ownership.
In addition to the $516 million, they also put a lot of money into renovating both the interior and exterior of the hotel/casino. I will admit that it looks much nicer from the outside, and the rooms are fairly nice. However, there's still no real theme, no party atmosphere which people liked so much in the '90s, and there's an air of incompetence and confusion which hangs in the place.
I stayed there in early July. I had a horrible interaction with the front desk employee who checked me in, a woman who seemed already mentally signed out for the night. I approached at 4:30am, and here's how the conversation went:
Me: "I'm here to check in"
Her: "That will be a $50 early checkin fee, are you aware of that?"
Me: "Oh... I'm not checking in early. This was for last night's reservation. I called and told them I'd be here at this time."
At this point, she looked VERY annoyed, like I was pulling a fast one or something. She scoffed, then the conversation went on:
Me: "Can you please put me facing the quiet side and away from the elevator?"
Her: "We don't have anything like that, you're already assigned to a room."
Me: "Can you please check and see what's available?"
Another scoff. She hammers away at the computer and finds a room which she thinks meets my description.
Me: "Is it away from the elevator? I see the room ends in 00, so that sounds like it might be right by the elevator."
Her: "It is right by the elevator."
DOH!! Did she not hear my request before when I was asking the room to be changed?
Me: "Oh, I will be sleeping late. I don't want right by the elevator. Can you change it?"
Another scoff. She starts tapping away at the computer and says that she found another room, but it "may not be on the quiet side, but I think it is." I accepted it, she reprogrammed the keys, but about 30 seconds later, I decided not to gamble with this, and told her I'd just like to take the last one she offered by the elevator. She tapped a few keys and said, "Okay, I've moved you back. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
I said, "Yeah, I saw you didn't reprogram the keys again. So these keys probably won't work, right? Can you program them back to the original room?"
"Oh, they'll work," she said.
"Are you sure? I've never seen this before where a room change occurs and the keys still work."
"I changed it back. It will work. I assure you," she replied.
I dragged all my stuff all the way across the property to the Masquerade tower, went upstairs and.... lo and behold,... the keys didn't work! Oh, and it wasn't by the elevator... it was at the end of the hallway!
So she did this to fuck with me. She purposely left me with bad keys because I was annoying her. Awful. The next morning I reached the front end manager, who conceded that it probably was an intentional move, and apologized to me. She took off the resort fee (the only thing I was paying, as the rest was comped), as a gesture to make it right.
But what a fucking joke that was. How do you not instantly fire someone who does shit like that?
Anyway... hopefully that nice manager still has a job, because Rio just fired 30 managers in what can only be described as downsizing.
Also, many executives have flown the coup. According to Vital Vegas:
Quote:
Rio recently lost its president, Trevor Scherrer, who stepped down due to a medical issue. Patrick Miller is the new President and CEO.
Rio also lost its Chief Financial Officer, Janice Fitzpatrick. She left in Feb. 2024.
Also no longer at Rio is the Vice President of Finance, Jason Ansuini. He left Rio in May 2024 and is now Vice President of Analytics at Resorts World.
Patrick Hoefler stepped down from the position of Rio’s Vice President of Food & Beverage in June 2024.
Rio’s Vice President of Sales position has been vacant for several months following a departure.
We’ve heard several other high ranking executives have moved on as well since Dreamscape took over operations from Caesars Entertainment, but our LinkedIn search hand is cramping up, frankly. You get the picture.
From what we can tell, these executive departures were related to other opportunities, they weren’t pushed out or part of any cost-cutting initiative.
Vital Vegas seems to like the Rio and his article treats them gently. However, if you read between the lines, "other opportunities" basically means these executives saw a sinking ship, and wanted to jump the fuck off.
Rio was drawing dead. They had no shot at success as a medium-high-end resort, especially not with the existing Rio name. Dreamscape wasted their money.
