A letter from Harrah's Rincon Casino about its expansion, changes.

This letter was sent by email from the Marketing Dept. at Harrah's Rincon about the expansion of the casino hotel and changes to the casino layout.

As fall is now upon us, I wanted to take a few minutes to update you on the progress of our expansion/renovation project at Harrah’s Rincon.

We are nearing completion of the reconfiguration of the entire casino floor. Our goal here was simple. Create a better and more comfortable gaming experience for our casino customers. We believe we’ve accomplished that and we’ve received quite a bit of positive feedback from many of our customers reinforcing that. For those of you who play video poker, we’re beginning the process of replacing many of our older video poker machines. We just made a major purchase of over 100 new video poker machines that we’ll be installing over the next several weeks. These are the same games you love, just on new machines.

As you’re well aware by now our new/expanded pool (Dive) was completed and opened on July 8th as scheduled. Along with the new pool experience, we added a new Mexican restaurant (‘ritas Cantina) and our new taco truck. To be frank, we struggled with the food in ‘ritas for the first few weeks, but if you haven’t been there in the past month, I highly recommend you give it another try. Based on customer feedback, we made quite a few changes to the recipes and I now feel very good about the food and service we’re providing to our customers.

In early December we will open our new convention/meeting/event/entertainment venue we’re simply calling “The Events Center.” This new venue will allow us to do many things. We will be able to conduct meetings/conventions, seat up to 1,000 for dinners, and provide a variety of live entertainment for up to 2,200 people in one showing. At the same time we open this venue we’ll be opening a new bar we’re calling “Corked.” Corked will focus on wines by the glass and craft beers from all over Southern California. We’ll also be able to do smaller scale entertainment in the lounge area at Corked. We’ll start out with live piano music as well as other acoustic musicians. Outside of Corked we will have a patio area that features a fire pit, as well as an area for additional outdoor entertainment.

In early April we will open our new hotel tower that includes an additional 403 rooms. The addition of these rooms will take us to 1,065 total rooms, making us the largest casino resort hotel in California, as well as one of the largest hotels in the state. Along with the new hotel tower, we will be opening Starbucks, which will take the place of Club Cappuccino. We will also be opening a bar (where Club Cappuccino used to reside) that we’re calling “Spiked.” Spiked will be a bar that focuses on cocktails that will be hand crafted, using the freshest ingredients and best liquors in a very modern environment.

You will be hearing a lot more about our future plans in the coming months. Our goal is to become one of the finest resorts in Southern California that provides you with many different experiences depending on your mood. We are working very hard to create an overall resort and gaming experience unlike any you will find outside of Las Vegas.

I’d like to personally thank each of you for your patience and loyalty as we move through this transitional period. Most of the disruption you’ve faced this year is behind us now and we’re in the final stretch of delivering you a world class resort experience unlike any you can find in Southern California. If there is ever anything that I can do for you, or any questions/comments that you would like me to answer/address, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

I wish you all good luck and many jackpots!

Darrell Pilant
Vice President of Operations & Marketing
Harrah’s Rincon Resort & Casino

What have you thought about the changes since you have been there often during the renovations?

I can't comment about the hotel except to say it looks nice. Unfortunately it appears that they have added 400+ rooms plus convention space but did not add any additional indoor parking. There are parking lots and overflow parking lots. But it appears that the indoor parking adjacent to the casino will now be at a "premium."

My only other concern is that the expansion will mean more people in the casino. What I liked about Rincon from the very first time I went there was that it was not crowded and low key. Now it's crowded, and I am sure it will get more crowded.

The high roller slots/video poker area used to be a quiet area, but now just outside the high limit area they have kiosks with noisy slot machines -- very noisy slot machines. The flavor and character of the place has changed.

And soon, with the hotel expansion, this hotel will be bigger than Pechanga and that means a bigger crowd. One reason I stopped going to Pechanga was that it was too big, too loud, too crowd and too smokey. I can see the same thing happening to Rincon. Too bad.

And what's more -- free play offers have dropped. (Some of the players comment that it's to pay for the expansion... and I don't doubt it.) In fact the offers have dropped so much it now makes more economic sense for me to go to Caesars once a month than it used to be to take advantage of weekly (even some daily) offers at Rincon.

I used to describe Rincon as the Goldilocks casino -- not too big, not too small, just right. But no more.

That's a shame. Have you thought about going to any of the smaller casinos around there or is the main focus still the TR tier credits? It's a shame that Harrah's was the only California spot for it. If anything good comes out of it, maybe since you are saving more for a once a month trip instead of weekly, your "trip" ratings might start to skew higher and you will get better offers from Caesars.

Hope it works out for you either way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Perdition

since you are saving more for a once a month trip instead of weekly, your "trip" ratings might start to skew higher and you will get better offers from Caesars.

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I have more than 680,000 tier points so far this year. But what has hurt me is that I go often betting small amounts with each visit and this is what hurt my offers from Caesars. You are right about this -- if I make fewer trips but bet the same aggregate that used to be bet over more frequent trips I will actually get better offers.

For example, I have a friend with a lower tier score who gets offers of $3,500 for shopping sprees and free play while my offers are for $1,000. The difference is that he only makes four or five trips a year and bets more each trip. That is what the "computer" wants to see for giving out comps.