Tropicana’s New Marketing Push Mainly Intended For Las Vegas Property

Andrew Calvo | February 11, 2009 | 0 Comments

Last week I wrote about Tropicana’s attempt to rebrand their properties into a more value oriented brand – one that customers would go to expecting great customer service for an inexpensive price.

The way the articles were written made it sound as though Columbia Sussex – the owner of Tropicana Entertainment – was doing this as a way to convince the trustee of the Atlantic City property they were the best bet for the property to continue in the future. None of the news articles (or myself) even considered the Tropicana Las Vegas property.

The Tropicana Las Vegas property is almost in worse shape than the Atlantic City property, and since they lost the Atlantic City property, Tropicana Entertainment had to file for bankruptcy. But from a story in the Las Vegas Sun, it sounds as though the goal of the image rebranding is meant for the Las Vegas property first and foremost, and if they are able to gain control of the Atlantic City property – it would be expanded to include that one as well.

I’m not too familiar with the Tropicana Las Vegas – I’ve never been there, and its rarely in the news; it doesn’t have any popular clubs, and sorta falls into the same categories as the Flamingo, Excalibur, Circus Circus and other older properties.

The rebranding makes of the Vegas property makes alot of sense, since there was a very constant return customer who enjoyed what the Tropicana had to offer in the past – its apparent that Columbia Sussex treated the Vegas property just as they treated the Atlantic City property by not investing much in its upkeep and maintenance. There was one major difference between the two properties through – the Las Vegas Tropicana was always due to undergo a major renovation – a new hotel tower and expansion of the casino floor, where as the Atlantic City property didn’t need to go through that since it just finished its own expansion of The Quarter and the new hotel tower.

I wish that the newspapers in the Atlantic City area (where I hear most of the “news” about the Atlantic City Tropicana) would take into consideration the Las Vegas property a little more than they do now. Right now the tonality of the articles always put Columbia Sussex in a bad light and make it seem as though the Atlantic City Tropicana was their only property and Columbia Sussex has no experience in casino gaming. While that may be the case – when they bought Aztar they didn’t have any casino gaming experience – but they are trying, and the fruits of their labor will be seen in the Las Vegas property – but only time will tell what will happen to the Atlantic City property.

Oh – and in case your wondering. No new news about the Atlantic City Tropicana going into auction..

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