The sound of Bill Hornbuckle admitting to the press that the pricing strategy was a mistake, that the $26 water and the $12 coffee were a “shame on us” moment, is an admission that rings hollow. But it’s not just MGM playing the penitent; Caesars’ CEO Tom Reeg has also conceded that certain areas “might have gotten over their skis pricing-wise.” The collective mea culpa from the two largest operators is less about genuine remorse and more about a sudden, shared recognition that plunging visitation numbers hurt the bottom line more than short-term price gouging helped.
Let’s be brutally frank: they didn’t notice the problem because the dollars were still rolling in. It took the financial pain of a revenue dip—not a sudden crisis of conscience—for them to acknowledge the price-to-value absurdity. I was at NYNY just this week, supposedly a more family-friendly property, and that $14 tap beer is a punchline. That’s the price of a 12-pack outside the Strip. This isn’t just obtuse; it’s a fundamental failure of hospitality ethos.
The hypocrisy is in the segmentation. MGM acknowledges that the low-tier guest paying $29 for a room shouldn’t be charged $12 for a coffee, but simultaneously defends the $24 mixed drink as “reasonable” for their higher-end customer. They’re still justifying extraction, just in a more polished way.
And here’s the operational elephant in the room: how do they fix it? Both MGM and Caesars only operate a handful of the outlets in their properties—mostly hotel, gaming, some restaurants, and room service. The vast majority of retail, F&B, and sundries are run by leased third parties. How, precisely, are they going to enforce this new “price-correct” mentality on every leaseholder selling that infamous bottled water? The complexity of the task belies the simplicity of the public apology.
Furthermore, if this is truly a course correction on the value proposition for the everyday traveler, are the minimum bets coming down too? I doubt it. The apologies are focused on the soft costs of coffee and water, not the core business of gaming or the high table minimums that keep the masses sidelined. It’s a PR campaign designed to fix the narrative, not necessarily to restore the integrity of the value proposition.
Life is so tech. But the cost of a $14 beer remains a human insult.
Mark Fancourt
