Luxury Travel Advisor - November 2007 - (Page 68) COVER STORY that’s comfortable. You don’t have to deal with the size of New York in one gulp.” The neighborhood concept also enables the element of discovery for the resort’s guests, he says. “When people find something on their own, they value it more highly. You don’t shove it in their face. When you let them find it, it’s theirs.” Wynn promises to use his newfound design philosophies in future projects. “We’ve got a long way to go in taking these ideas further, which is why I’m going to build more in China and more in Las Vegas,” he tells us. Already in the works is Encore, an addition to the existing Wynn Resort Las Vegas, set to open next year. “At Encore, the entire side of the casino, from one end to the other, is glass opening onto the pool. The other side is an atrium. There’s sunshine everywhere in Encore. No more dark places,” he says. As for Wynn Macau in China, which is currently open with 600 rooms, plans are for all suites to have gardens. “I’ll have lots of villas,” he tells us. “I’ve got room to make a casino be in a garden. I’ve got room to make every restaurant an arrival experience, to be a dreamy integration of landscape architecture, interior design and my favorite new thing, having spaces change while you’re in them. I love the idea of morphing spaces while you’re in them.” Steve Wynn values the concept of good design that enhances the guest experience. He also values the Five Diamond, Five Star ratings Wynn Resort has earned (“We have Five Stars in food and Five Stars in the hotel’s Tower Suites, which has 600 keys. We have Five Diamonds in the whole hotel and Five Diamonds in the restaurant,” he says) and he fights to maintain them every single day. He pays a fee to AAA and to Mobil to do regular critiques on the property to ensure that the resort maintains it luxury status. “The hotel was built to be Five Diamond. I need that credential and I’ve made it clear that we do. Everybody that works here is very proud of that. It’s now become important to everybody, not just WYNN’S BARTOLOTTA restaurant allows guests to enjoy the resort’s ADVISOR INSIGHT: “My advice to agents is to visit the places that they recommend,” says Steve Wynn. “The most important thing that travel agents are doing is trying to get their constituencies to trust them. And that means making promises you can keep. But what people can expect to do over time is to develop an absolute certainty that that travel agent knows what they like and knows how to match them up with a place that they will enjoy, that they can trust that travel agent, that she won’t sell them out because she got a bigger commission from some hotel in California, Palm Springs or Florida. The ability of a travel agent to match the customer’s needs with the actual place is key—and at the high end, it’s life or death. You don’t want to screw somebody with money and tell them a place is first class if it’s not. So the most important thing for agents is to visit the places that they’re going to recommend and to know for sure what the experience is going to be so they can tell somebody and be a really dependable source of information. They have to get on the plane and go. And any place worth a damn will welcome them, if not for free then at a very reduced rate. They are their partners, after all.” uniquely natural setting with its outdoor cabanas (below). Steve,” he says. While Steve Wynn says he prefers to speak about present projects and not what’s past, Luxury Travel Advisor did ask him where he got his inspiration for his legendary projects. Turns out, it comes from the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, which he visited as a young man. “Back then, I got this notion of what it would be like to own a destination resort hotel. Years later, when I was older and I had a chance to do it, it was amazing how right I was. The Fontainebleau is the foundation study for this model out here [in Las Vegas].” For Wynn, the Fontainebleau days brings back fond memories. “It was the first destination resort in an environment like that,” he recalls. “It had gardens and gorgeous cabanas. Anybody with money in the United States, Europe or Latin America went there during the season if they could get in. You had to be a guest to get in the lobby. I’ll never forget it. It was created by Ben Novack, who walked around with his wife, Bernice. I remember thinking, ‘It’s good to be king.’” He also learned one key lesson. “I noticed, even in my immature adolescent days, that it was very unlikely that Ben Novack would ever be mistreated in his own hotel,” he laughs.
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.