NEWS & NOTES

Las Vegas’ Hooters Casino Hotel has launched a $20 million makeover of the off-Strip resort. Vice President and General Manager Mike Storm said plans call for renovations to all the resort’s 657 hotel rooms, a refurbished and enlarged casino and sports book, construction of a new pool area, a new showroom, an upgrade to the property’s signature Hooters restaurant and the addition of two new eateries.  •  A boutique Las Vegas hotel has been sold to a Hong Kong group for $18 million. The 150 Rumor on Harmon Avenue across from the Hard Rock Hotel is now called Serene Vegas and is being managed by Dallas-based Prism Hotels & Resorts. The sale was brokered by developers Siegel Group, which bought four-acre noon-gaming property for $10.5 million in 2009 during the recession.  •  The Macau government will consider building social, cultural, sports and recreation facilities on a site now leased for greyhound races by Macau Yat Yuen Canidrome Co. Ltd. The government announced last July that the company will have to shut down the racetrack by mid-2018. Animal welfare activists have called for an end to the “cruel” dog races in Macau.  ?  More than 80 percent of new resort hotel rooms on Macau‘s Cotai Strip will be occupied for January 30 through February 1, the third to fifth days of the Chinese New Year. Deutsche Bank’s Karen Tang says all Sands China hotel rooms in Cotai are booked, along with all the inventory at Wynn Palace and Wynn Macau. Tang said advance booking trends for CNY 2017 seem stronger than last year’s October Golden Week.  ?  Wynn Macau has applied for and been granted 25 new-to-market live-dealer gaming tables as provided under the Macau government’s table cap. As recently as January 9, Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau reported that Wynn Macau had not applied for the coveted table allotment. Sands China Ltd. also applied for and was granted 25 new tables this year. Both operators are entitled to 25 more new-to-market tables on January 1, 2018. ?   Macau’s six casino concessionaires may soon be required to hire more locals for management positions, says the city’s Labor Affairs Bureau. Macau’s Five-Year Development plan originally aimed to have 85 percent of upper and middle management filled by Macau residents by 2020. That timeline of that plan has been revised to the end of 2017. The government has promised not to renew work permits for non-local workers under the new plan.  ?  Chinese visitors to South Korea rose 15.1 percent year-on-year in December 2016, according to data from the Korea Tourism Organization. The surge followed a slowdown in Chinese tourism in October and November. CLSA analysts say the positive trend will continue through January and that “market concerns will ease.”  •  Artificial intelligence may be winning the “Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante” poker challenge at Pittsburgh’s Rivers Casino. The tournament pits the Libratus AI program against four of the world’s top professional poker pros— Jimmy Chou, Dong Kim, Jason Les, and Daniel McAulay—in a 20-day Heads-Up, No-Limit Texas Hold ‘em poker tournament. At the halfway mark, the casino reported that Libratus was opening a substantial lead over its human opponents. At press time, the computer, programmed by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, had a $471,600 lead over the humans.  •  PDS Gaming Corporation, a worldwide provider of gaming equipment and financing solutions, announced that an affiliate of Northlight Financial, a New York investment manager, had acquired 100 percent of PDS. The acquisition follows regulatory approvals of the transaction required by various state and tribal gaming licensing agencies and follows a previously announced $150 million credit facility provided to the company by another Northlight affiliate in 2015. PDS is one of the world’s leading providers of customized financing of gaming equipment and services.  •  Wynn Resorts CEO Steve Wynn received $12.5 million worth of company stock last week as part of his 2016 compensation package, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It’s part of an executive compensation package instituted by the operator in 2014, which cut the CEO’s fixed salary from $4 million to $2.5 million and instituted performance compensation in both shares and cash. The performance earnings are tied to Wynn Resorts property EBITDA.   •   Win-River Resort & Casino in Northern California, owned by the Redding Rancheria, will open the Win-River Retreat spa on February 1 under new management. The manager, Kristine Taxara, said, “We are extremely excited to continue to offer a spa amenity at Win-River Resort & Casino with our own brand and we will continue to apply our guest service standards to this new endeavor. We pride ourselves in ensuring our patrons have the best time while visiting our resort. We will be offering an array of spa services and packages including massages, body treatments, facials, waxing, and nail care. We also have steam and sauna rooms within our spa facility.”  •  The Grand Portage Lodge and Casino in Cook County, Minnesota closed for several days last week for renovations and then reopened. This is the second of three phases of expansion and it added more seats to the lodge and added more cultural references from the Objibwe tribe, which owns it. The casino now has a large casino floor with over 400 slot machines, many of them brand new. Phase three will add an event center and expanded banquet hall.  •  The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians in Mobile County, Alabama, isn’t giving up its fight for the right to offer gaming, despite a recent federal judge’s ruling that gaming machines seized by the state in 2013 must be destroyed. Attorney General Luther Strange said the issue is whether the tribe is federally recognized. The tribe insists that it is, but the federal judge says it isn’t, and that it doesn’t have sovereignty, or the right to offer gaming, even though the state recognizes it as a tribe. Tribal Chief Framon Weaver says the tribe is writing an appeal.