Meeting News - March 24, 2008 - (Page 40)

Destination Insider: Las Vegas ‘M’ Stands for Meetings In Nearby Henderson Construction is fully under way on M Resort, Spa, and Casino, a new property scheduled to open next spring on 80 acres of land at the southeastern corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and St. Rose Parkway. With 351 rooms and 39 suites, the 12-story property will be the largest resort built within the city limits of Henderson. Situated 400 feet higher in elevation than the casino resorts on the Strip, M Resort will have views of the skyline from every guest room and restaurant within the hotel. The hotel’s 60,000-plus sf of meeting space will cater to small and mid-size gatherings. Each function room overlooks the Canyon Pool and the Las Vegas skyline. The 100,000-sf Canyon Pool area, with waterfalls and landscaping to reﬂect the serenity of the surrounding desert and mountains, will be available for private functions. Other amenities include 92,000 sf of gaming; a 23,000-sf, full-service spa; and multiple restaurants, including one at the top of the hotel and a buffet eatery with a live cooking studio. —HWB Ba Ba Reeba! Foodies Unite! to make Spanish tapas. After the culinary class, everyone sits together and enjoys their creations. “Every group that Teams take up tapas-making at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba. has done this teambuilding event has gone crazy about it,” said Tommy Licata, CEO of Creative Endeavors, which developed the event. The restaurant is on the Strip, next to Fashion Show Mall, and has a good-size demo kitchen and three private dining rooms. Need a little competition added to the recipe? Try the Paella Cook-Off for up to ﬁve teams of 10 attendees each. —HWB C afe Ba Ba Reeba has cooked up a culinary teambuilding event that teaches teams how MeetingNews Q & A: The Latest at the Monte Carlo MeetingNews checks in with Michael Catalano, vice president of sales and marketing at the Monte Carlo, following the Jan. 25 ﬁre on the resort’s top ﬂoors. QHow A did the ﬁre affect meetings? QAre A operations back to normal? Operations in our meeting facilities are back to normal and have been for several weeks. While the ﬁre was limited to the outside of our hotel above the roof line, the tremendous amount of water needed to suppress the ﬁre created problems for us on every ﬂoor of the hotel. A massive 24-hour effort went into restoring damaged areas, and with the exception of the guest rooms on the uppermost floors of the tower, we are completely open and back to business as usual. now going through the redesign process and are already under way with work on rooms on the uppermost ﬂoors. We will eventually renovate the entire hotel in the same new design. We hope to have these newly renovated rooms available sometime later this year. QWhat A other renovations are planned? We are very fortunate to have such a great staff here at Monte Carlo and such tremendous support from our sister properties here in Las Vegas. Not only were we able to immediately relocate inhouse guests and incoming reservations to other hotels, we were able to do the same for all of our meeting clients as well. For the period when our facilities were unavailable, client events were relocated to other MGM Mirage facilities. Monte Carlo contract rates were maintained for all services at these new locations, including rooms, rentals, banquets, and equipment. This was a time when the size and strength of the MGM Mirage corporation really came into play. Have there been any changes in your emergency procedures? QWhen A will the top ﬂoors reopen? Monte Carlo already had a major room renovation scheduled to take place in the next two years. Therefore, the decision was made to simply accelerate that room renovation process. We are March 24, 2008 Since MGM Mirage acquired Mandalay Resort Group in April 2005, it has been steadily investing in projects to make these resorts even more attractive to travelers. Monte Carlo already opened a successful restaurant, Diablo’s, that added a new dimension to our dining experiences. Our new steakhouse, Brand, will bring a whole new ﬂavor to our resort when it opens later this year. Other exciting new projects are in planning and discussion phases. While I can’t reveal any details, I can assure you that the future at Monte Carlo is very bright. We were very happy with the way our emergency procedures and communications worked. More than 6,000 guests and employees were evacuated with no serious injuries. We can always improve our safety measures and our emergency procedures, so we are currently studying these lessons and determining if we can improve our training or policies. www.meetingnews.com Q A 40 MeetingNews http://www.meetingnews.com

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Meeting News - March 24, 2008

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