Wynn Shakes up SISO

Vegas entrepreneur tells for-profit managers to look from the inside out

By Michael Hart -- Tradeshow Week, 5/3/2004

Take the cynical view and there's little surprise Las Vegas superhero Steve Wynn was available to give the keynote speech at the Society of Independent Show Organizers' April 19 CEO Summit. After all, he's just a year away from putting nearly 300,000 square feet of meeting space on the market.

But take the attitude of most of the record 230 attendees at the annual meeting – held this year at the Four Seasons at Troon North in Scottsdale, Ariz. – and he had a message of optimism that hit home and corresponded with the event's theme: "Shake it Up."

"I would like Steve Wynn to be the industry's spokesman," Jeffrey Stevenson, managing partner and co-CEO of Veronis Suhler Stevenson, said later.

Wynn, chairman and CEO of Mirage Resorts, explained his rare appearance at a tradeshow industry event by saying, "I bought a piece of property wedged between 4.8 million square feet of exhibit space. That put me on the path to being here."

But Wynn actually did a lot more than try to pre-sell exhibit space for his new hotel, Wynn Las Vegas. He outlined a new paradigm for attracting visitors to Las Vegas, one that many of the for-profit show owners in the audience felt could apply to their own businesses as they recover from possibly the worst economic downturn in the tradeshow industry's history.

Wynn told of a period in Las Vegas history, dating from the early 1950s until just recently, when the bright lights of the Strip drew enough people inside to keep casino and hotel owners profitable.

"There was one simple idea going on," he said. "The Strip was a carnival midway. All the hotels are designed with the idea of the outside looking in."

What's more, Wynn said, it worked – and he should know. He is the hotel owner responsible for placing a volcano in front of the Mirage, dueling pirate ships at Treasure Island and a lake at the Bellagio.

"I spent $140 million or $150 million to get people to giggle on the sidewalk," he said.

But times change. "Things that would have brought a 'Wow!' 15 years ago can't bring a yawn today," Wynn said.

In response, he is making a $2.5-billion gamble that it's not what's outside on the Strip that counts, but what's inside. The result will be a casino-hotel-convention center that appears to the visitor as if it is far removed from the hubbub out on the Strip. It starts with a mountain Wynn and his architect, Marnell Corrao, are building outside the hotel to separate it from the street and continues with every imaginable effort to make visitors believe they are in a world all their own.

Certainly the meeting rooms will be wired for high-speed Internet access, but they will also each have their own outdoor patios giving views of either the mountain, a massive network of gardens or the only 18-hole golf course linked to a hotel on the Strip.

It's all part of his idea to draw people back to the basics: the inside looking out, rather than what Wynn refers to as "the stuff" on the street.

"Institutions survive," he said, "because of the strength of an idea. Without an idea, a collection of stuff is doomed."

It's a simple message that SISO attendees talked about for the next three days, drawing parallels to a back-to-basics strategy many have applied as they rebuild their own businesses.

"Like Steve Wynn said," repeated Roland DeSilva of DeSilva & Phillips, "look from within and build from within."