Websites on Las Vegas make good moolah

Peter Henderson

LOS ANGELES: Las Vegas is no stranger to the long-shot bet, and the dream of beating the odds is what drives the economy of the desert gaming city -- even its websites. In fact, two home-grown Internet sites are betting that they can take on the biggest names in the online travel industry by offering visitors a better look at Las Vegas, including a peek into the Sin City's darkest corners.

The first, Vegas.com, bills itself as the most-visited city site on the Internet. Its rival, Lasvegas.com, which launched on 19 Nov, has exhaustive listings and articles on the gambling and entertainment oasis as well as booking engines that aim to make it easy to plan a vacation and reserve tickets for shows, hotel and air travel.

While deals are abundant, executives at both companies, owned by business groups in the city, say that service is their best weapon in the travel wars. Howard Leskowitz, head of Vegas.com, says his bigger competitors, like Expedia.com and hotels.com, focus on price.

"They are in a race to the bottom," said Leskowitz, who took the helm of Vegas.com about a year ago, intending to turn it from a booking site into an information center. Following that strategy, Vegas.com has turned profitable and quintupled conversion of visitors to paying customers, to about 2 percent, he said in a recent interview.

That is about half the rate of some big travel competitors, he says, but they offer a wider selection of destinations. What competitors don't have is a guide to strip club etiquette as well as extensive listings on "the kind of thing that makes Sin City Sin City," Leskowitz says. Vegas.com does.

Lasvegas.com makes similar claims, however, and both say they provide independent information. "We live here in Las Vegas. We play here," says Erick Rodriguez, president of lasvegas.com. His site is owned by the Mandalay Resort Group and Park Place Entertainment, but it also features other properties. Privately held Vegas.com is not owned by a real estate company.

Las Vegas shows are in high demand, which means there is a premium on good information, both executives said. "People have to have a guy" to help them navigate Vegas, says Leskowitz, who says he has turned Vegas.com to profit since his arrival. "We're that guy."

Offering expertise is an Internet-based business model in itself, as online computer help desks demonstrate, and Rodriguez says lasvegas.com has the potential to become a template for other destination sites.

Although both Vegas.com and lasvegas.com offer loads of information, the user may experience some bumps. Neither site, for instance, was able through its primary entertainment search function to find "O," the show by Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio hotel, even though "O" is given as a search example on Vegas.com.

Moreover, Vegas.com only appeared to book America West airlines, and always as part of a hotel package, while lasvegas.com offered more choices but no easy build-your-own package option. Both sites say the best is yet to come.

Leskowitz promises more personalization for return guests -- his key clients -- and improved access to hard-to-get events. So far, though, after trying Vegas.com, lasvegas.com and the Bellagio Web sites, the easiest way to find a pair of tickets to "O" was via the toll-free telephone number listed on the Bellagio site.

A lasvegas.com spokeswoman said the site was in transition and would not sell tickets for a half-dozen long-running shows because the service fees it would have to charge would be prohibitively high. In the future, the site will refer users to show organizers, she said. A spokeswoman for Vegas.com said the problem was a technical glitch, and would soon be remedied.

© Reuters