Sahara gearing to get back to meetings, conventions business

Meetings and conventions, the backbone of midweek visitor traffic in Southern Nevada, is on a slow road to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that has shattered what has been a thriving industry.

Chris Bond, Sahara’s vice president of hotel sales and a former executive with MGM Resorts International’s New York-New York and Mirage properties, joined Sahara in November with the idea of developing a meetings presence at the 67-year-old, 1,600-room property.

But Bond wasn’t counting on having to deal with a pandemic.

“What was penciling out to be a really nice year and to just put the brakes on it was disheartening,” Bond said. “But because of the time frame and booking window, in a smaller property like ours, you can book something and have it happen within two or three months.”

Bond determined that the best solution for Sahara was to use existing space in the building more efficiently.

Getting the word out

Does a restaurant only serve meals at the dinner hour? No problem, use some of that space for a meeting in the morning. Does a group want an environment that’s more exciting than a big hall with four walls? No problem, try one of Sahara’s two rooftop pool decks.

“We’re moving back into a little bit more of a traditional corporate environment where fashion and beauty and financial and insurance kinds of companies feel very much at home in this type of property,” Bond said.

He also knew that he wasn’t going to reach out to businesses and associations with his small sales crew so he developed a partnership with the global Teneo Hospitality Group.

“Sahara Las Vegas offers our clients all the amenities and expanded services a modern meeting planner needs set in a luxurious, newly transformed resort with the brand cache of one of Las Vegas’ best known names,” said Mike Schugt, president at Teneo.

Founded in 2013, Teneo has a global sales force that will be able to steer meetings planners to the historic Strip property that was acquired by the Meruelo Group in 2019 after operating five years as SLS Las Vegas. Former owner Sam Nazarian’s SBE Entertainment Group distanced itself from the Sahara’s historic desert theme and focused on the Los Angeles nightclub scene to draw customers and, in the process, de-emphasized the property as a meetings and conventions draw.

“As an independent property, we are going to need to find a way to get the word out on the Sahara, who we are today, since the perception and the understanding of who we are today is not out there,” Bond said.

Weddings?

Bond was gearing up for a big push into the industry when the pandemic hit.

But he’s discovered a couple of silver linings to go with the unprecedented 78-day closure of the state’s casinos.

“We had two or three months of ramp up to try to get things going until shutting down,” he said. “But it also kind of gave us a chance to really evaluate not only what we needed before this happened and what we needed to do as we came through an unprecedented event like this.”

One of the surprises: unprecedented demand for unique wedding spaces, thanks to postponements during the virus outbreak.

“Wedding requests have been through the roof,” Bond said. “It’s at a level no one has ever seen since we’ve been here.”

It also doesn’t hurt to be two Las Vegas Monorail stops away from the Las Vegas Convention Center.

“With their position in relation to the Convention Center, they’re one of the properties that’s uniquely situated in close proximity that can take advantage of some of those larger groups that are at the Convention Center as well as still be in great proximity to the airport and downtown,” said Brendan Bussmann, director of government affairs for Las Vegas-based Global Market Advisors LLC.

“They’re wanting to drive additional meeting and convention space to drive additional revenue along the way and as those things start to come back over the course of time, they want to be well positioned for those groups,” Bussmann said.

The pandemic has been a crushing blow, but Bond expects business to pick up in the first and second quarter of 2021.

“Our October looks OK, as does the first part of November,” he said. “We need to get through the fall and then as the date turns to 2021, let’s forget about what happened this year and get the city and the convention levels back to what everyone remembers.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.