Caesar's Palace is one of the most well-known casinos in Las Vegas. Its lavish, ancient roman themed atmosphere attracts guests and visitors from all over the world. The massive casino, variety of shops and restaurants, and amenities is just the start of what this unique property offers. But if you go back in time, you'll discover that this famous location wasn't always known as Caesar's Palace, but had a different name prior. URComped CEO, Craig Shacklett, interviews Oliver Lovat, Managing Director of Denstone REA Consultants, to learn more about the history of Las Vegas and it's big-name casinos. These interviews were conducted through URComped's newest B2B social platform, Casino Marketing University, which provides information from industry experts to casino management, marketing, and operations teams.
Oliver Lovat tells us a story that is not in the books. While he was writing an essay on the history of Caesars Palace, he had the opportunity to sit with Stan Mallin, who was Jay Sarno's business partner on creating Caesars Palace. He told Lovat that they had a brand named "The Cabana" with the trading name "Desert Palace" and had built "Cabana Hotels" in Palo Alto, Dallas, and Atlanta. Their next step was to come to Las Vegas and build the BIG Cabana which would be known as "Cabana Palace." That became the working name for this Las Vegas property.
Mallin informed Lovat that he and his business partners then left for Rome to buy statues to go on the driveway of the Cabana Palace property. As they were looking around sites in Rome, they decided not to call the property "Cabana Palace," but instead, they changed the project name to "Hadrian's Villa." That name clearly didn't last and they ended up coming up with "Caesars Palace."
They probably came up with tons of other names for this property that weren't mentioned and didn't make the cut. So what if Caesar's Palace had a different name? Would it look or be any different than how it is now? How important is the actual name?
After telling this story, Lovat leaves us with a question. “If you were to change the name of the property to something else, how would it affect it?”