The Vegas Guy: Hollywood Casino/Tunica

TUNICA, Miss., Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The Hollywood Casino sits at the end of the road. It's a nice road, four lanes all the way, but of the ten casinos in Tunica -- America's third largest gambling destination after Vegas and Atlantic City -- the Hollywood is the one that has to fight and scrap a little more, and for a simple reason.

If you set out from Memphis, the only large city for miles in any direction, you have to drive right by nine other gambling joints before you get here.

And that's a shame, actually, because the Hollywood is one of the true class acts in the riverboat states. Just like its sister casinos in Shreveport, La., and Aurora, Ill., Hollywood/Tunica tries to create a total Las Vegas gambling experience, complete with all the amenities, in a market that's more accustomed to cheap cocktails in plastic cups.

"We do everything we can," says Mary Beth Felty, the casino's "VIP specialist." "Direct mail appeals. Better payout -- we've got 98 percent machines all through the casino, and we've had that for three years. Cash back on your players' card. We've started giving away cruises to Atlantis in the Bahamas. But it's a tough market. There are slots wars all the time."

What? Slots wars at the Hollywood? The Hollywood casinos in other states are aggressively oriented toward the big-ticket gambler, so it's a little disconcerting to see the Hollywood in Tunica duking it out with Fitzgerald's and the Sheraton -- widely perceived as being at the very bottom of the market -- for day-trippers.

They do tend to market to the RICHER slots player, the one-dollar player with an average bet of $2.50, as opposed to the nickel-droppers across the street at the Isle of Capri.

Nevertheless, it's clear that the Hollywood here has had to adapt to its market and become a little less than it would otherwise be. There just aren't many high rollers out there these days.

Whenever I describe the Hollywood casinos to someone who's never seen them, it's hard to get the idea across that "movie memorabilia" -- the theme of this chain -- can be exciting. It sounds like the sort of thing you see in any suburban shopping mall. But it's not just any artifacts -- it's things like Dorothy's ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz," which are circulated from casino to casino, and the motorcycle from "Easy Rider." It's the memorabilia that is loved even by people who hate memorabilia.

"Our theme is not like anything you'll find in any of the regional markets," says Ed Pratt, one of the Dallas-based Pratts who own the Hollywood chain. "We're the first truly Las Vegas-style facility in theming in both Tunica and Shreveport. Our memorabilia and uniforms are the best you'll find. It's really clever and really fun."

Like the company's other casinos, the theme is 1930s Art Deco Hollywood, with motion picture artifacts featured in all the restaurants, lobbies, foyers, walkways and gaming areas. On the day I visit, the entrance to the gaming floor is dominated by a replica of The Titanic that was actually used in the movie -- not a miniature, a 6,000-pound scale model, complete with its own moat.

Nearby is the DeLorean from "Back to the Future," which recently replaced the Batmobile, and across from that is the car Elvis drove in the movie "Spinout." Elvis is obviously big in Tunica -- it's located not far from his two favorite hangouts, Tupelo and Memphis -- and so they have a lot of his jumpsuits and other costumes. Suspended from the ceiling is the biplane from "North by Northwest," the Harrier jet from "True Lies," and the B-17 used in "Memphis Belle."

Fairbanks, the casino's steakhouse, is decorated with Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s memorabilia from the movie "Don Q, Son of Zorro," but, more important, it's consistently rated the top restaurant in Tunica. (I tried it and would say it's great by Tunica standards, very good by Memphis standards. The best thing about it is the wine list.) The Hollywood is also the only casino in the market to have a special lounge for high-ticket table games -- "high" being a relative term in Tunica, meaning a $25 per hand betting minimum.

What they don't have -- and what the other two Hollywood casinos are famous for -- is much entertainment to speak of. (The Aurora casino was launched by Frank Sinatra in 1993, the Shreveport casino by Tony Bennett in 2000.) They have a faux-tropical-jungle lounge that books local acts on weekends only, and they have headliner shows twice a year in their thousand-seat ballroom. (Chely Wright was there earlier this year. In the past they've booked David Allan Coe, Debbie Reynolds and Paul Anka.)

This puts them in the position of sending their big gamblers to other casinos -- mainly the Horseshoe, the Grand and Sam's Town -- when big names are in town, or else ferrying people into Memphis for arena shows.

The only other things they have for the affluent gambler are an indoor pool and spa complex, and a Scottish-style golf course called River Bend Links that they share with the nearby Harrah's and Sam's Town casinos. Otherwise it's an 85 percent slots business, with everyone arriving by car, mostly from within a 100-mile radius, but sometimes from as far away as Oklahoma. The visits are short -- about three hours -- and it's the kind of market where the buffet is a loss leader; they'll give away a lot of food to get people through the front door.

Still, if anyone can beat these odds, it's the Pratt family. Pratt brothers Jack, William and Edward were originally hotelkeepers, opening their first property in 1967 in their hometown of Mineral Wells, Texas. Over the next 10 years they got into hotel franchising, developing and managing properties all over the states, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America.

Then they stumbled into gambling in 1977 when they bought the Holiday Inn Condado Plaza in San Juan, Puerto Rico. "It had an 8,000-square-foot casino already there," says Pratt. "So we ran that for three years and we discovered we were making more on the casino than on the rooms."

They had the gambling bug, and by 1980 they had entered the booming Atlantic City market. Using the same management team that now runs the Venetian in Las Vegas, they operated the feisty little Sands until 1997. But by that time they had decided they wanted out of the big casino cities -- the Sands was always a small player in a pond that kept getting bigger -- and six Midwestern states made their decision easier by legalizing gambling in the early 1990s. In 1993 they landed the lucrative license for Aurora, and then followed that up with a 1994 license in the boom city of Tunica.

If they had it to do over again, they probably would have built farther to the north, but they were so early into the market that they couldn't have predicted how many casinos would out-flank them. When the Hollywood opened, on Aug. 8, 1994, it was in the hottest "cluster" in the area, an area called Casino Strip.

Harrah's, Southern Belle and Sam's Town were already there, but the same week that Hollywood opened, the Sheraton opened a few miles to the north in an even more convenient "cluster" that would eventually include the Horseshoe and Circus Circus (now the Gold Strike).

Development, in other words, was leapfrogging up the river, ever closer to Memphis, and just as Casino Strip killed the four original riverboats at Mhoon's Landing to the south, they were in turn devastated by developments beyond their control, especially the construction of the largest casino in the market, the Grand, located right on Tunica County's northern line.

Fortunately the Pratts know how to play this game. "In the new gaming venues we really excel," says Pratt. "So we decided to concentrate on that. This is our forte. The problem with it is that licenses are limited and hard to come by."

Fortunately the riverboat casinos aren't as affected by Sept. 11 as Vegas has been. "The emerging markets always hold up better in a recession," says Pratt. "Plus we saw Las Vegas as a game we didn't want to play. You can build a billion-dollar project there and get single digit returns on your investment, or you can spend $250 million in an emerging market and get 25 percent returns. Those are your only choices. You can't be a small player in Las Vegas. You either get as big as they are or you sell out to them. We operate better in these markets. This is our niche, like Station Casinos has the locals niche in Vegas."

Despite being at the end of the road, Hollywood hasn't done badly. Wall Street ranks it fourth in the market, behind the Horseshoe, the Grand and the Gold Strike, and it's showing about $116 million a year in net revenues on an initial capital investment of $120 million. Part of that investment was in a luxury hotel wing, which I highly recommend, but $5 million of it was also in a casino floor attraction called "Adventure Slots," which seems to have outlived its novelty.

The idea is that a special high-limit slots area is designed like the caverns and warrens in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," complete with fire-breathing totems and golden mummies.

But the fire was out. "Everyone had sort of SEEN the fire," said a slightly embarrassed casino executive. "You have to keep these things fresh."

The great thing about the Hollywood, for a tourist, is that you won't find a property this upscale for these kinds of prices ($29 for a room is not uncommon) anywhere else in the country.

They built a palace where they only needed a feudal castle, and the result -- for those willing to drive all the way to the end of the road -- is casino nirvana. Take advantage. Check in.

HOLLYWOOD CASINO

1150 Casino Strip Resort Boulevard, Tunica, Miss.

Theme: American Movie Classics

Opened: 1994

Total investment: $120 million

Known for: Only true gourmet restaurant in Tunica (Fairbanks), 98 percent payback on slots.

Marketing niche: Drive-ins from Memphis.

Gambler's Intensity: Medium

Cocktail speed: Rapido

Dealers: Ultra-friendly

Bosses: The same

Tables: 37

Rare games: 21+3, single-deck $2 blackjack, 20-times-odds on $3 craps, 25-cent roulette

Slots: 1,600

Rooms: 506

Surrounding area: Next door to Harrah's, across the street from Sam's Town and Isle of Capri, in the Casino Strip cluster at the far south end of Tunica's casino district.

Web site: hollywoodcasinotunica.com

Overall rating: 80

Joe Bob's bankroll: Up $70 after some spirited $3 craps: total to date +$105

(E-mail Joe Bob Briggs, "The Vegas Guy," at [email protected] or visit Joe Bob's Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail-mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)