He Shoots, He Scores

Michael Massari leads Harrah's focused meetings mission

Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 8/7/2006

Michael Massari knows what it's like to not get much bench time during a busy game. The 6'5" vice president of meeting sales and operations for Harrah's Entertainment says that by the time he got his bachelor's degree from Cabrini College in Radnor, Pa., he'd spent 10 years playing "a lot of basketball."

That kind of stamina comes in handy when you work for a mega-hotel-casino corporation that, in the space of a few years, completes a $9.3 billion merger with another mega-hotel-casino corporation (Caesar's Entertainment), tosses in a handful of smaller acquisitions, increases the staff under your management from 300 to 1,500, and triples the amount of meeting space you run.

Last December the company completed the $370 million acquisition of the Imperial Palace, sealing its ownership of seven properties, including several continuous acres along the Las Vegas Strip. During the expansion, Massari was promoted to oversee group business across all Las Vegas properties.

As if his job weren't enough pressure, he decided there was no time like the present to go back to school. He enrolled in the M.B.A. program at the University of California Irvine, and now spends each Thursday through Saturday there, all while maintaining his professional and family commitments.

Massari nonetheless found time to speak with Tradeshow Week Senior Editor Heidi Genoist about the responsibilities he has taken on and his company's unique convention-industry strategy.

Question: Why has Harrah's made such a concerted effort in the last couple years to reach out to meeting planners?

Answer: That began when we decided to commit $39 million to the expansion of the Pavilion at the Rio (All-Suite Casino Hotel).

Harrah's is great at targeting customers that it knows where to locate and that it can create loyalty with. About 2 1/2, 3 years ago, we sat down and looked at the business out there and asked ourselves who those customers were. Meeting planning was the No. 1 other business, aside from gaming, that we could apply that strategy to. So, it was pre-merger that we decided to move into that business, and the resources we have post-merger have helped us bolster that activity.

Q: Is it accurate to characterize Harrah's strategy as more meetings-oriented and less tradeshow-oriented?

A: Yeah, I think so. We certainly do our share of tradeshows. We specialize, of course, in the smaller shows, those that are 100,000 square feet or less. To consider us a competitor with the Sands Expo, Mandalay Bay Convention Center or LVCC (Las Vegas Convention Center) — or McCormick Place or any of the other ones outside Las Vegas — no. We don't compete on that level.

Q: Why not?

A: There's a niche market out there for us of people who have smaller shows, whereas I don't think there would be for somebody that's much, much larger. Our task is to say, "What are the things that a customer is not getting when they're stuck in a 2 million sq. ft. facility?" and really try to deliver those things to those customers.

Q: Will that change? Do you have plans to enter the big exhibition market?

A: No, I don't think we will. We're certainly planning on expanding our offering to the meeting planner community, and to the tradeshow community here in town. We think we'll do an expansion at Caesars, and at Bally's-Paris. It's possible we'll do an expansion behind the Flamingo, Imperial Palace and Harrah's, but I don't think any of those would entail a large exhibition center.

We don't necessarily want to be all things to all people.

Q: As far as tradeshows go, what market sectors offer the most promise for Harrah's?

A: Anywhere from RVs to tea, tobacco to women's clothing. No particular segment stands out. I would expect that to continue. In terms of promise, I suppose at the end of the day, we want them all.

Q: To exhale a deep sigh of relief a year from now, what will you have to accomplish?

A: We've had a pretty big sigh these first five months with the revenue being up. Our total revenue for the first five months of this year was up 28 to 29 percent over last year.

The unified culture among all the businesses from a meeting sales and operations standpoint is our next big task. If I could sit here a year from now and say every person in our organization truly understands what our customers need and treats everybody with dignity and respect all the time, it would be a successful year for us.

Q: What do you attribute the financial success to?

A: Three things: The first is the combined entities' ability to share information and leads; the second is the dynamic six-property offering that was not available to anybody anywhere in this city, or the country, before us; and the third was the transition internally from a room-night basis to a revenue basis. Those are the three key drivers.

Q: What do you mean by a revenue-based model rather than a room-night model?

A: Traditionally — and this has changed a little recently — the hotel business has been based on room nights. We think about our customers in terms of their total revenue contribution to our business, not necessarily the number of room nights they bring us.

One customer might have magnificent catering events, but few rooms. Another might have few events, but a lot of rooms. They're equal in our eyes. That's opened us up to a bevy of customers that we didn't have before.

Q: Who do you consider your competitors?

A: On an individual basis, we compete with anybody who's in the small to moderate-sized tradeshow and meeting business: the Gaylords, the Venetian, Mandalay Bay, the MGM, the Swan and Dolphin, the Anatole.

We have the same offerings that all those folks do in terms of great lounges and ballrooms, and executing great meetings — and then we get to offer them a couple extras on top of that, which come from this unified six-property experience, the entire Las Vegas experience.

Q: From a venue perspective, what do you think are the industry's biggest challenges?

A: We need to be really careful that there will be a balance of customers to facilities that will be reached over time. I worry about a generation of people growing up that won't know what it's like to run 65-percent occupancy, and have to go out hungry and scrap.

Q: Industry observers are fond of pointing out there is already an oversupply of exhibit space. Do you agree?

A: Certainly I'd like to go through the rest of my career when there's not enough space and our products are in such demand that we get to pick and choose who our customers are. But that's not likely to happen.

I don't worry about it much, because the excellent operators will be separated from the not-so-excellent operators — some will be successful and others won't — and that's OK. That's probably a good balance.

Q: Even in Las Vegas?

A: Yeah, because we'll only keep building it until it comes into balance. The market will eventually move to equilibrium. It can't continue forever, where there's more customers than meeting space.

Q: Since Harrah's merger with Caesars Entertainment (in June 2005), you've seen your responsibilities grow exponentially. How have you managed?

A: What we have to do, when we go through these types of transitions, is keep hold of the things that guided us and helped us be successful when the responsibilities weren't so large.

Treating people with dignity and respect, understanding what we're trying to accomplish, articulating what we're trying to accomplish, and then holding people accountable to those goals are things that, whether the responsibilities are small or large, get you there.

Q: Have you faced any challenges in the transition?

A: It's a big, big, big business. It's a lot of people. It's one thing to create an identifiable culture among 25 to 30 people that work in the same building and are together 60 hours a week. It's another thing to do that across six buildings, with multiple leaders.

Q: How many people do you manage now?

A: More than I like to think about. Between catering, customer service, convention services, sales and banquet departments, it's probably in excess of 1,500. That's enough to keep someone awake at night. That's a lot of people who rely on us to feed their families.

Q: After the merger, Harrah's promised one standard contract for all properties, and an otherwise smoother booking process for multiple venues. Has that come to pass?

A: Yeah, I think so. For us, it's been remarkably successful so far. Don (Ross, vice president of operations) and Jordan (Clark, vice president of sales and marketing) in their positions, especially — representing all six properties for customers — really help get the customers what they want. For us, that's key.

Q: Is it easier for meeting and convention organizers, in terms of the number of people they deal with and the amount of paperwork they have to go through?

A: There are two answers to that. One would be for long-term customers that were used to dealing with particular individuals. We've certainly changed a lot of those individuals, and that's been a little bit of a struggle that we've worked very hard to overcome. I would say we still have some work to do to help those customers fully understand the new benefits of what we're trying to accomplish.

For new customers, who hadn't experienced what it was before, I think they would say the six-property offering and the expertise they get in dealing with us have been fantastic.

Q: After Sept. 11 five years ago and Hurricane Katrina last year, are you now prepared to deal with another catastrophe that might affect group business?

A: You're probably never prepared to deal with something of that magnitude. You can never go to bed at night knowing there's a binder in your desk that says what to do. But if you're dealing with your customers in a smart manner, you're better prepared than somebody who has a binder — although the binder helps.

Q: How far along are you in your MBA program?

A: I'm a second-year student, officially. In three weeks, I'll be over the halfway point. June next year is when I graduate. ... If there was a very good school here in town, I think I would still travel, because Thursday night in a hotel room is a lot different than Thursday night at my house. I do five or six hours (of studying) Thursday and Friday night, so when I'm home, I can just play with the kids.