Hard Rock Biloxi aiming at Hip Niche
By Nell Luter Floyd
nlfloyd@clarionledger.com
Book a room at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Biloxi and you’ll find rock ‘n’ roll blaring, large plasma screen TVs in all the hotel rooms and lavish colors.
The $235 million resort, set to open later this month, has begun accepting reservations for the 294 guest rooms and 24 suites at its hotel. Sept. 11 is the earliest rooms can be reserved.
Rates start at $99 a night at the resort located east of Beau Rivage Resort and Casino.
Hard Rock, which employs about 1,000 people, is the first casino to open on the coast since Beau Rivage in 1999.
The Gulf Coast has 12 casinos that generated $102 million in gross gaming revenue in July. Once Hard Rock opens coast casinos will employ almost 14,000 people.
Each room features a bed with a 6-foot-high, deep purple headboard and solid white duvet cover, and each room is equipped with a 42-inch plasma screen television, a touch screen phone and Bose CD Music System.
“Everybody who checks in receives a CD music compilation specially made for guests,” said Nona Koon, director of advertising at Hard Rock. “It’s a little souvenir.”
The casino will include 1,500 slot machines, 50 table games and a poker room.
The resort also will include a Hard Rock-theme beach pool, a full-service spa, and salon and fitness center. There will be a Hard Rock merchandise store and a Hard Rock Cafe.
Other restaurants planned for the resort are a Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a buffet named Satisfaction, Starbucks Coffee, Ben & Jerry’s, a circular bar known as Vibe and a top floor bar named Level12.
The resort is maintaining a Mississippi connection with a 112-foot-tall sign in the shape of a Peavey guitar. The sign replicates the new HP Signature guitar named for Hartley Peavey, founder and owner of Meridian-based Peavey Electronics.
Ronnie Bagwell Jr., owner of Marty’s Pharmacy & Compounding Center in Flowood, said he’s not much of a gambler but an overnight stay at Hard Rock might be fun.
“I’d probably go stay there one time to see what’s it’s like,” he said.
Vickie Smith of Brandon, children’s librarian at the Brandon Library, said she and her husband Huey, owner of Nova Realty Group, usually travel to the Gulf Coast each August to celebrate her birthday and like to stay at Grand Casino in Gulfport.
“A visit to Hard Rock Casino is something we’d think about,” she said. “A new casino does give the other casinos more competition. More competition might cause them to loosen the slots. People go where the slots are loosest.”
Hard Rock is not announcing its first day of business but plans an unannounced “soft” opening toward the end of the month, said Nona Koon, director of advertising at Hard Rock. “We’ll just open in the middle of the night,” she said.
A private party celebrating the completion of the casino is scheduled Sept. 8.
The rock band Velvet Revolver will perform Sept. 9 as the first ticketed concert, in the resort’s 1,500-person entertainment venue.
Vincent Creel, who handles public affairs for the city of Biloxi, said the Hard Rock name will diversify the Gulf Coast gaming market.
“You’re talking about introducing a globally known brand as opposed to just another casino,” he said. “We think it will attract younger visitors to the area.”
Daniel Davila, a gaming analyst with Sterne Agee & Leach in New Orleans, said Hard Rock’s niche is a “hip young” market attracted to its well-known brand. “If it were the exact product with a different name outside, it wouldn’t have the same cachet,” he said.