Sands Regency Hotel and Casino: A Regal Experience
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Written by Ashley McGown   
Sunday, 01 March 2009
Sands Regency Hotel and Casino: A Regal Experience
With new ownership and an updated look, this hotel and casino is re-emerging as a top property in Reno.
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The concept of supply and demand is simple enough to understand; when there is a demand present, the supply grows. As the supply grows, the demand will lessen, and eventually, the market balances itself out. According to Jay Thiel, vice president and general manager of Sands Regency Hotel and Casino, he and his team learned this lesson the hard way.

Sands Regency was founded by the Claudianos family in the 1930s, just after gaming was legalized in Nevada. The organization has undergone extensive changes since then. What started off as a corner store quickly grew into a motel and then a small hotel. Today, it’s a three-tower hotel.

Sands Regency Hotel and Casino: A Regal Experience
Jay Thiel, VP and GM
Located in downtown Reno, the company went public in the early ’90s. After a few years in the market, the organization began to struggle, so Ferenc Szony was brought in to help revitalize the company. Thiel refers to Szony as the “father of the new Sands,” crediting him with getting the organization back on its feet.

Thiel said the hotel’s stock price was low because of a sudden explosion of gaming competition in the Reno market. When the Silver Legacy Resort and Casino was built in 1994, it became the largest in the city, and it drew many customers away from Sands Regency and other local businesses.

“Historically, Reno has been a tougher gaming market than Las Vegas in terms of competition,” Thiel said. “But in any market, if there’s a demand for a service, it’ll grow. When the Silver Legacy was built alongside a few other businesses here, we witnessed the market grow and become more divided as the demand remained stagnant. As a result, a lot of hotels and casinos experienced financial issues and began to close.”

A bigger picture
Thiel and the team at Sands Regency continued to renovate the property throughout the turn of the century, and eventually they began to purchase additional hotels to add to the company’s portfolio, which increased its stock value.

In 2006, the entire Sands Regency portfolio was purchased by Herbst Gaming Incorporated, a Las Vegas-based company that owns 13 casinos throughout the US.

At the time, the team at Herbst Gaming had little experience in the casino industry; they dealt primarily with slot routes. Consequently, the organization gave Thiel and his team the opportunity to stay in control of Sands Regency’s day-to-day operations.

The acquisition provided Sands Regency with access to more resources, even though Thiel was able to remain in control of how the business was run. Because Herbst Gaming is run by three brothers and their father, Thiel said he feels as if he’s dealing with a small family business even though it’s actually a corporation.

“The team at Herbst Gaming relies on the people who are running the companies they acquire to teach them about casino management,” Thiel said. “We report to them, but as general managers, we take care of the individual hotels’ and casinos’ daily operations.”

Smart advertising
With an average of 650 employees and annual revenue of $40 million, Sands Regency is considerably smaller than most of the casinos and hotels in Las Vegas. So, how do they position themselves to compete with the gaming businesses in that market? Simple: they don’t.

“It’s impossible to compete with Las Vegas as a gaming destination,” Thiel said. “Marketing our gaming product versus their gaming product would not be favorable for us. We focus on promoting Reno as a laid-back, less expensive destination.”

To promote this image, Thiel and his team work hard to associate the company with Lake Tahoe, which is a one-hour drive from Reno. Instead of marketing Sands Regency as a gaming destination on its own, they position the company as an amenity of Lake Tahoe.

When marketing, Sands Regency tries to highlight seven aspects of the company: casual, comfortable, fun, affordable, hassle-free, friendly, and efficient. “These key words are what we’re all about,” Thiel said. “They distinguish us from the intensity associated with Las Vegas, and they’re attractive to the type of people that might prefer Reno. We run everything on the property—marketing programs, billboards, and print ads—through a test to make sure all of these words are applicable and spring to mind.”

Looking to 2009, the team at Sands Regency has adapted one additional customer base to target through promotion: the niche market. Although the organization is large enough, with 833 rooms, to house mid-size conventions, a limited amount of meeting space proves to be a hindrance.

As a result, Thiel and his team are looking to target the smaller niche markets. “This year, we hope to attract these types of organizations,” Thiel said. “We’re a TAG-approved hotel, and we’ve hosted the Professional Bowlers Association before, so we believe it’s feasible.”

Although he’d like to build a larger convention center to match the number of hotel rooms, Thiel said this is a project reserved for the fairly distant future. Because of the economy, he and his team are hesitant about investing in any projects of such a size.

“Fortunately, we finished the building’s renovation in December 2008, so the economic situation didn’t effect that project at all,” Thiel said. “It looks great, and I think it will help keep business steady in the year to come. However, I don’t see us undertaking any large projects in the very near future.”
 
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