Sin City nightlife isn’t taking a bath at the hands of the ever-expanding Vegas daylife pool party scene. One might think big spending clients can’t possibly frolic away the day at a beach club, dropping thousands to secure a prime cabana, guzzle pricey bottles of bubbly, vodka and Patron, get burned by the broiling sun and still turn up for their table reservation at a nightclub, ready to party and swipe their Black card again.
But the ballers aren’t skipping the nights to sleep off their afternoon stupor. “It’s Vegas. There’s no such thing as taking it easy. You’re there for 48 hours and you go hard the whole time,” says Noah Tepperberg, co-owner of Tao Beach Club and Tao Nightclub at the Venetian. “Our night VIP hosts aren’t losing any revenue to day[life]. I’ve only seen one top client miss a night [because of daylife] in the past three years.”
In fact, daylife and nightlife feed remarkably well off each other, driving customers back and forth and upping spending overall. “Our nightclub promoters hit up the pools to get partiers for later, and our pool promoters use the nightclubs to get people to come by the next day,” says Jodi Myers, president of The Light Group, which operates the newly opened LIQUID Pool Lounge at Aria Resort & Casino as well as BARE Pool Lounge at The Mirage. “Daylife isn’t hurting nightlife. It’s helping. The only thing may be the clubs get started a little later when the pools are open.”
The strategy of having multiple venues open for revelry at any given hour is paying off. Tao Beach, which is also open at night as an outdoor club, is currently up 15 percent in revenue from this time last season, which Tepperberg attributes, in part, to house music promotions with Beatport Sessions. BARE’s numbers, while not up discernibly, “are on par with last year, which was a great one for us,” Myers says.
Given similar nightclub pricing models — $5,000 for a cabana at Tao Beach and bottles starting at $400; $3,500 food and beverage minimum at LIQUID — it’s no surprise more nightlife brands are dipping their toes into the already-saturated daylife market to bolster the bottom line. The latest newcomer? Nikki Beach is slated to open a four-acre pool at Tropicana Las Vegas in the spring of 2011. As part of a $165 million renovation, there’ll be all the usual trimmings: beds, cabanas, bottle service and grub — and a 15,000-square-foot nightclub component. But how will newcomers like Nikki Beach fare amongst the more established or elite day clubs?
“Vegas has 310 days of sunlight a year and a lot of tourists come dying to lay by a pool and soak up the rays. If your hotel is full, your pool will be full, regardless of the venue,” Myers says. Tepperberg echoes her sentiments: “If you’ve got 4,000 hotel rooms above you, and just 10 percent of them want to lay out at the higher energy pool, then it’ll be packed.”