Moonwalker.Fan
Proud Member
As Las Vegas struggles to recover from one of the worst economic slumps of any American city, the is hailing a powerful new weapon in its fightback: Celine Dion.
Celine Dion is the best-selling female artist of all time
By Jacqui Goddard 6:00PM GMT 19 Mar 2011
As a place synonymous with extravagance and good fortune, it could be said that Las Vegas was dealt a bad hand when recession struck. But after one of the worst economic slumps of any Americancity, the so-called Capital of Second Chances is hailing a powerful new weapon in its fightback: Celine Dion.
The French-Canadian singer has been dubbed a "messiah" and the debut of her new show at Caesar's Palace last week treated with all the reverence of the Second Coming for the extraordinary scale of prosperity it promises to restore to the troubled Strip.
"She's been called a 'one-woman economic stimulus package' and I think there's a lot of truth to that. People will come to the city just for her and they will spend money and as a consequence, she has an outsized impact on the economy," said Stephen Brown, director of the Centre for Business and Economic Research in Las Vegas.
"And 'Bigger than Elvis, Sinatra and Liberace put together?'" he added. "Definitely."
He estimates that Dion's show will create up to 7,000 indirect jobs and around $114 million worth of new economic activity in each of the three years for which she has been contracted. Box office takings are over $10 million already for the first month's worth of shows alone.
During her last run in Las Vegas, from 2003 to 2007, every last ticket of every show sold out, accumulating gross profits of $400 million and reaching a total audience of three million. Caesar's built a $95 million, 4,000-seat auditorium especially for her, complete with dazzling stage wizardry and a dehumidifying system to protect her voice from the dry desert heat.
By coincidence, she departed Caesar's in 2007 just before the city's economy collapsed, and is returning to it just as some believe it is poised for potential recovery.
"Las Vegas was caught in the boom and bust that occurred in the US housing market and it was probably more severe here than in any other city in the US," said Dr Brown. As tourism crashed, gaming profits slumped and hotels, casinos and restaurants were forced to lay off staff. Hotels posted record losses of $6 billion for 2010.
"Last year in Las Vegas, unemployment hit 15.7 per cent. And if you look at statistics on people who are considered under-employed - people not in full-time jobs who wish to be, and take the number of people who have dropped out of the labour force but are still living in the area - then you get up to 25 per cent. Even when tourism rose again in 2010, the expenditure per head was still down."
Dion, 42, is the best-selling female artist of all time - hits include the Oscar-winning theme songs from the films Titanic and Beauty and the Beast. She has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, won more than 1,000 awards and enjoys a deeply loyal fan base. Air Canada has added more flights from Quebec to Las Vegas just to cope with the mass of fans making the pilgrimage from her home province.
Few people are under any illusions that Las Vegas can be single-handedly salvaged by one woman and a microphone. On the same day that her new show opened, the fabled Sahara hotel and casino, one-time favourite of stars including Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles, and the setting for the movie Ocean's 11, announced that it will close in May, driven to the wall by the recession after 59 years in business.
But economists and business leaders are convinced that she will be a formidable factor in the city's financial rejuvenation; tourism, for example, is expected to rise by 3.1 per cent in 2011 - equating to around one million more visitors - with Dion's comeback accounting for a significant part of the surge. Hotel occupancy rates will rise accordingly, as will restaurant services, merchandise sales, casino spending - all prompting new employment through a knock-on effect known as the "multiplier factor.'
Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, who professed to be the "world's happiest mayor" even in the thick of Sin City's financial woes, says that his smile has been stretched a little further by Dion's return.
Gary Selesener, president of Caesars Palace, said that there has been top-level debate over the wisdom of staging such a major show against a backdrop of such severe economic hardship before the decision was made to sign Dion for 210 performances over the next three years.
The hotel casino lost $831.1 million last year - around $3.5 million more than its net income in 2009. Despite the continuing hangover from the recession, he said, "People still want to see the big stars get on the stage and sing their hits."
Dion has moved her family - husband and manager René Angélil, 69, son René-Charles, 10, and five-month-old twins Nelson and Eddy, into her penthouse at the hotel, along with her sister to care for the twins while she sleeps and her brother-in-law to cook for her.
Appropriately enough for a star expected to work the Midas Touch on Las Vegas, among her songlist on opening night was the theme from the James Bond film Goldfinger. But the star, who is reaping a $500,000 pay packet per show, claims not to believe in her own powers of financial influence.
"I want people to come and not feel disappointed. That's my most important job," she said. "I personally don't think I have anything to do with the economy."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...s-to-bring-the-sparkle-back-to-Las-Vegas.html
Celine Dion is the best-selling female artist of all time
By Jacqui Goddard 6:00PM GMT 19 Mar 2011
As a place synonymous with extravagance and good fortune, it could be said that Las Vegas was dealt a bad hand when recession struck. But after one of the worst economic slumps of any Americancity, the so-called Capital of Second Chances is hailing a powerful new weapon in its fightback: Celine Dion.
The French-Canadian singer has been dubbed a "messiah" and the debut of her new show at Caesar's Palace last week treated with all the reverence of the Second Coming for the extraordinary scale of prosperity it promises to restore to the troubled Strip.
"She's been called a 'one-woman economic stimulus package' and I think there's a lot of truth to that. People will come to the city just for her and they will spend money and as a consequence, she has an outsized impact on the economy," said Stephen Brown, director of the Centre for Business and Economic Research in Las Vegas.
"And 'Bigger than Elvis, Sinatra and Liberace put together?'" he added. "Definitely."
He estimates that Dion's show will create up to 7,000 indirect jobs and around $114 million worth of new economic activity in each of the three years for which she has been contracted. Box office takings are over $10 million already for the first month's worth of shows alone.
During her last run in Las Vegas, from 2003 to 2007, every last ticket of every show sold out, accumulating gross profits of $400 million and reaching a total audience of three million. Caesar's built a $95 million, 4,000-seat auditorium especially for her, complete with dazzling stage wizardry and a dehumidifying system to protect her voice from the dry desert heat.
By coincidence, she departed Caesar's in 2007 just before the city's economy collapsed, and is returning to it just as some believe it is poised for potential recovery.
"Las Vegas was caught in the boom and bust that occurred in the US housing market and it was probably more severe here than in any other city in the US," said Dr Brown. As tourism crashed, gaming profits slumped and hotels, casinos and restaurants were forced to lay off staff. Hotels posted record losses of $6 billion for 2010.
"Last year in Las Vegas, unemployment hit 15.7 per cent. And if you look at statistics on people who are considered under-employed - people not in full-time jobs who wish to be, and take the number of people who have dropped out of the labour force but are still living in the area - then you get up to 25 per cent. Even when tourism rose again in 2010, the expenditure per head was still down."
Dion, 42, is the best-selling female artist of all time - hits include the Oscar-winning theme songs from the films Titanic and Beauty and the Beast. She has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, won more than 1,000 awards and enjoys a deeply loyal fan base. Air Canada has added more flights from Quebec to Las Vegas just to cope with the mass of fans making the pilgrimage from her home province.
Few people are under any illusions that Las Vegas can be single-handedly salvaged by one woman and a microphone. On the same day that her new show opened, the fabled Sahara hotel and casino, one-time favourite of stars including Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles, and the setting for the movie Ocean's 11, announced that it will close in May, driven to the wall by the recession after 59 years in business.
But economists and business leaders are convinced that she will be a formidable factor in the city's financial rejuvenation; tourism, for example, is expected to rise by 3.1 per cent in 2011 - equating to around one million more visitors - with Dion's comeback accounting for a significant part of the surge. Hotel occupancy rates will rise accordingly, as will restaurant services, merchandise sales, casino spending - all prompting new employment through a knock-on effect known as the "multiplier factor.'
Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, who professed to be the "world's happiest mayor" even in the thick of Sin City's financial woes, says that his smile has been stretched a little further by Dion's return.
Gary Selesener, president of Caesars Palace, said that there has been top-level debate over the wisdom of staging such a major show against a backdrop of such severe economic hardship before the decision was made to sign Dion for 210 performances over the next three years.
The hotel casino lost $831.1 million last year - around $3.5 million more than its net income in 2009. Despite the continuing hangover from the recession, he said, "People still want to see the big stars get on the stage and sing their hits."
Dion has moved her family - husband and manager René Angélil, 69, son René-Charles, 10, and five-month-old twins Nelson and Eddy, into her penthouse at the hotel, along with her sister to care for the twins while she sleeps and her brother-in-law to cook for her.
Appropriately enough for a star expected to work the Midas Touch on Las Vegas, among her songlist on opening night was the theme from the James Bond film Goldfinger. But the star, who is reaping a $500,000 pay packet per show, claims not to believe in her own powers of financial influence.
"I want people to come and not feel disappointed. That's my most important job," she said. "I personally don't think I have anything to do with the economy."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...s-to-bring-the-sparkle-back-to-Las-Vegas.html
