Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Hotelie Heaven

Cha-ching! We've been studying hotels and Microsoft Office for so long, but we took a break to learn about the casino industry. The top three casino markets are in Macau, Singapore, and Las Vegas. This industry is hotelie heaven because most large casinos will be built with large hotels! I've always thought that Las Vegas was the biggest industry, but it's actually Macau! I've heard about Macau and Stanley Ho(Macau's Gambling King), but I've always thought that I only knew about it from seeing my dad's Chinese newspapers. 

The biggest shocker of the day was that casinos have bought their "whales" and "high rollers" Rolls Royces! How do people gamble so much that casinos still make profit after buying them some of the most expensive cars in the world? High rollers will spend a quarter of a million dollars per visit while whales spend millions. They get free rooms, food, personal flights, and much more. They'll even may for gamblers' spouses to go on shopping sprees! 

Casinos make so much profit that casinos and hotels in Las Vegas will be blown up to build a new building, even if it's perfectly fine! Las Vegas businesses know that keeping up with the newest trends will bring in more customers. I've never noticed this, but one of the videos showed that hotels are built was an appealing aura. They paint the walls certain colors and dim the lights to create a relaxing, carefree experience. They hire the world's best chefs and bring in crews of entertainment.

Not surprisingly, a lot of the casino world's best people are from Cornell's hotel school. Linda Chen, a Cornell alum, is starting to become the world's richest woman. She was paid ten million dollars just to sign a contract which paid her millions more! Just like in the hotel industry, a lot of people wonder how many jobs there can actually be besides front desk or housekeeper, but there's many more jobs available. You may not even work in a hotel or casino! Most people analyze stocks and trends for a living. 

As interesting as the casino industry is, I'm shocked that there's such a huge gap between financial situations. Some people make so much money, while others are homeless or barely making ends meet. A lot of children in third world countries don't even receive an education, nonetheless fly around in private planes. It's challenging for me to think that people will blow millions of dollars in a matter of hours when they really don't need to win money from casinos to become rich. If a high roller or whale skipped a weekend of gambling and donated to organizations like the ILC, so many more students could reach their potential and aim to attend institutions like Cornell or Vanderbilt. 

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