The Walt Disney Company is BIG, no less so in the hotel business than any of their others, and you would think their experience, economies-of-scale size capability, and general expertise in giving value for money both to guests and stockholders would allow them to do great things at a relatively low cost and high speed.
Or would you, based on recent years’ experience?
Well, ANOTHER mega-entertainment-and-resort hotel company, one that was once even associated with the Mouse, might be an interesting point of comparison so, darnit, I’ve compared. The results are both amazing and not shocking.
Here’s the article that set me on this path.
The MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas – Photo Credit: Tristan Surtel, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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Nobody would discount MGM Grand (which has gone through all kinds of corporate twists and turns to be sure since Kirk Kirkorian built the first hotel, now a Bally, on the Las Vegas Strip in 1973) as anything other than a mega company with holdings all over the world (heck, they even once built a theme park at the hotel we’re discussing).
And when their flagship mega-property, which has well over 4,000 rooms and suites, is due a renovation, that’s a big, big project indeed.
It’s time, it seems, and MGM Grand is spending $300 million to do the job, utterly transforming those 4,212 rooms and suites in its main tower (there are more in offshoot spaces that have seen more recent renos) and in the process adding 111 suites, bringing the hotel’s total suite count to 753.
And how long will this epic reconstruction take? How many years of whatever color construction walls MGM uses other than go-away green will be there to confuse and dishearten gamblers?
A new nature-inspired, mixed-use Disney resort will welcome families in 2022 along the picturesque shoreline of Bay Lake located between Disneys Wilderness Lodge and Disneys Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground at Walt Disney World Resort. The deluxe resort, which will be themed to complement its natural surroundings, will include more than 900 hotel rooms and proposed Disney Vacation Club villas spread across a variety of unique accommodation types. (Proposed Artist Concept Only, Disney)
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They’re starting now and the first of the reno’d rooms will be available in March. They’ll all be done by December….of THIS year.
All that and adding a “Netfix Bites” restaurant themed to that network’s shows AND a new pool club to boot.
Just so you don’t have to, I did the math, and the total cost divided by the rooms affected is a bit over $70k per, which is labor, materials, associated design, and other costs.
SO the question is this: IF this was DISNEY…..how long would it take and how much would it cost?
Epcot Spaceship Earth Walt Disney World Orlando 2010. Photo Credit: chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Nobody knows, but we can guess based on the cost of past and current Disney hotel projects, including DVC and the endless pace at which these snail-reno’s progress…if you can call it progress.
So…that begs the question: Why?
How can MGM Grand do this so fast and so relatively In-expensively on such a MASSIVE scale when the Mouse House, with or without the Genslers and other help, seemingly cannot?
The concept Art for World Celebration in Epcot – Disney
And there’s another point of comparison that a deep dive into that article will reveal. Guess who on Wall Street backs BOTH big companies with some ownership stakes?
Blackstone.
Yep. Them guys.
Ultimately, other than an issue of management competence vs. incompetence, which we’ve seen in so many instances during the Bob Era, this comes down to my favorite old not-such-a-joke query about illuminations and headshrinkers:
“How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“Only one, but the bulb has to really WANT to change.”
Here endeth the lesson…in the same place that, lately, all the lessons about how our once beloved House of Mouse is being run do.
