Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/secrets-of-a-vegas-high-roller.html
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So what are the pay and the psych services like for these butlers?
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Some of these ‘high rollers’ sound like repulsive-ass creeps; I pity the domestic staff that has to deal with them as part of their job…
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Boulevard Penthouse guests get pampered by two legions of staff: butlers and hosts. Hosts are like banker-bestie hybrids who liaise between high-rollers and casino: they extend interest-free, seven-figure lines of credit and learn how much players are willing to throw down and how risk-prone they are.
Each of the Cosmopolitan’s 25 hosts nurtures a portfolio of 300 to 500 clients who’ve demonstrated the propensity to play hard. Almost all of the clients are men, ranging in age from millennials to 70-year-olds, and they stick around for three to five years before going dark—usually due to bad investments, dips in the economy, or divorce.
The hosts sound like Bizarro World versions of wealth managers, which seems about right considering what irresponsible arseholes their high-rolling whale clients tend to be.
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My spouse and I have made it a point to head to Vegas each year as a part photography convention for her and part adult get away for us. We stay at the Vdara spa each time as it has no casino attached to it and is smoke free, and every room is a suite with laundry, kitchen, and soaking tub in them.
We head to one of the adjoining casinos for one night only for a couple hours each year with a couple hundred dollars in our pockets and chalk it up to spending money on vaca (usually the Bellagio or Aria as they connect to the Vdara). We dine at a off strip restaurants and frequent some of the speak easy bars there which are all pretty damn good.
I cannot imagine dropping millions to get one of these rooms, let alone acting/behaving in this manner if I did.
Can we just have our French Revolution now?
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Yeah, that Investor Class of society sure does a whole lot more productive spending to benefit the economy with their $trillion+ tax cuts than us mere middle class consumers would. If ordinary, non-insane human beings ever got real spending money, the entire Monkey-Butler segment of the industry could go under, leaving us stranded in a Monkey Gap with our overseas competitors…
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Funny, I was just thinking these hosts sound like grifters who get paid actual W2 income to grift.
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I can’t imagine going back there… for any reason.
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I have to go to Vegas each year for the world’s biggest gun show. It is hard for me to understand that place, and its symbiotic parasite/host relationship. The suspension of disbelief required to think it’s a fun place is beyond me. It’s hard to earn a dollar; how can you enjoy giving it away for nothing, especially when most of those suckers have so few dollars to begin with?
The faux luxury also bothers me. If you know the chair is designed to withstand 4000 lb loads and be hosed off when someone vomits (or worse) on it, can you still think it’s a nice chair? The whole city feels like a staph infection waiting to happen.
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“The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos… but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space."
-HST
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My wife and I both came away with bronchitis, which staggered so that each of us was way, way sick for our whole trip: Brice, Zion, etc…
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To paraphrase a phrase (??): Vegas is a tasteless man’s vision of luxury.
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The phrase “lowest common denominator” comes to mind.
The greater the ‘luxuriousness’ the stickier the tackiness.
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Every time I go to Vegas, I make a point to head into the desert. It’s not too hard to get to, you only need to rent a car. Lake Meade and Red Rock are right there and just purely fantastically awesome places (especially if you live somewhere gray and rainy like I do).
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Having too much money really does mean you have too much money, Who knew?
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Isn’t it strange how two people can come upon the exact same idea from two different perspectives at pretty much the same time? “It steam engines when it comes steam engine time”, as they say.
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…and monkeys might fly out of my butler!
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Her other favorite pastime: asking the butlers to dress up in pajamas, crawl into bed next to her, and read her bedtime stories…
That’ll look great on a future resume.
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I take the kids down every other year or so, and see all but one of the Cirque shows, Blue Man Group, and Penn & Teller. But that is pretty much all we do there, then we leave quickly.
It is fun, but easy to get oversaturated.
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