Go on, book that Vegas trip

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on November 4, 2009 at 8:12 am

That’s almost what the investment community is saying to Gaylord Entertainment CEO Colin Reed, who on Tuesday put Sin City on a short list of cities his company may buy its way into.

A good chunk of the hotel/resort operator’s third-quarter earnings call Tuesday focused on Las Vegas, where a bunch of glitzy properties are struggling — or as Reed put it, “operating way below their pro formas” of six or seven years ago. Several analysts pushed Reed to clarify his recently floated strategic option of buying such a troubled property to add to his portfolio.

Generating an appropriate return is priority No. 1, Reed said, and such a return will have to come primarily from serving one of the company’s core customer groups — associations that rotate their meetings around the country each year. Half of those groups, Reed added, will never go to Vegas. The other half wants to be there regularly — and they could be enough to tip Gaylord’s M&A scales in the coming year or so, when Reed thinks the market will really hit bottom.

“I don’t think we should get into too much detail, but we’ve been consistent in telling people over the years that people rotate out of our system to go to Vegas,” Reed said. “Is it a market that interests us? It is. There are probably as well five, six, seven other markets in the United States that interest us as well.”

Investors seem plenty interested, too. Gaylord shares (Ticker: GET) jumped almost 8 percent Tuesday. Put a good chunk of that down to the company’s solid cost controls and the improving performance of its D.C.-area property, but also consider it a sign that the market is confident Reed and his team will soon find something to their liking in the Nevada desert.

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Tags: acquisitions, Colin V. Reed, commercial real estate, distressed assets, Gaylord Entertainment Co., hotel management, Las Vegas  

HCA Vegas hospital sued over alleged assault

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on September 23, 2009 at 9:20 am

A woman who was treated two years ago at HCA’s Mountain View hospital in Sin City says staff allowed a man to enter her room and rape her while she was in a ‘coma-like’ state. Company officials say this is the first they’ve heard of the alleged incident.

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Tags: HCA Inc., hospital management, Las Vegas, litigation, Mountain View Hospital, Nevada  

HCA laying off in Vegas

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on August 20, 2009 at 8:11 am

The Nashville-based hospital operator is cutting about 100 jobs at its Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Sin City. The company says the layoffs, which will include managers and support staff, are primarily due to lower reimbursements and a rise in the number of uninsured patients. HCA last month appointed a new COO at Sunrise.

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Tags: HCA Inc., hospital management, Las Vegas, layoffs, the uninsured