Atlantic City Needs to Reinvent Itself as a Vacation Town
Atlantic City is struggling. Right now the Atlantic City Boardwalk is nothing but aging casinos… scratch that, the Atlantic City Boardwalk is nothing but aging and closed casinos.
The saturated casino market has left the companies operating these AC casinos struggling to maintain and upgrade their properties, and has led to pricing wars between the casinos that have harmed everyone involved, leading to the closing of one property, with two more scheduled to close in the coming months, and yet another in the throes of bankruptcy.
The underlying problem is that Atlantic City gambled on casinos and never hedged their bets. Casinos was the answer regardless of the question and now the city is paying the price for that folly — Obviously it’s more complicated than that as Atlantic City has struggled to become relevant even before gambling came to town, but for the purposes of this article let’s focus on the city’s reliance on gambling.
There is little in the way of real commerce or industry in the city, or anything to do except gamble.
This was fine when Atlantic City used to be a destination city thanks to its gaming, but now with gaming options springing up all over the US there is no longer a need to vacation in Atlantic City to get your gaming fix, and the casinos themselves have morphed into little more than massive locals casinos over the years.
But this doesn’t have to be the case. Atlantic City can still be a vacation destination. It just needs to reinvent itself as a vacation town where you can gamble and not a gambling town where you can vacation. Unfortunately, it needs a pretty big makeover.
What Atlantic City has (Gaming)
Other than Las Vegas, Atlantic City is really the only place in the US with city-planned gaming. What I mean is Atlantic City has an area that is essentially zoned for casinos, which explains how just last year there were 12 of them in a town of under 40,000 residents.
Las Vegas aside, there is no other place in the country where you can go “casino-hopping.” This is a terrific lure for visitors who like to get their gamble on.
What Atlantic City has (Location)
Atlantic City also has beaches, beaches that should be used as a marketing tool to families, but if you were to play a word association game with Atlantic City virtually every response would be something to do with gambling.
When you mention AC beaches the inevitable response is “yeah with a great view of the casinos.” Which isn’t entirely true, but it is the perception.
AC needs to move away from being known merely as a gambling town and advertise itself as a vacation town.
What Atlantic City doesn’t have
Unfortunately, in between those casinos (and deeper into the city) there is nothing, and to be a vacation town you have to appeal to more than one demographic.
Sure there are small clubs and shops, but there is nothing else in AC that would cause a family to choose Atlantic City over other locales like Miami, San Diego, Myrtle Beach, or Virginia Beach. Furthermore, the morphing of the casino properties into locals casinos (with busloads of New Yorkers and other day-tripping junkets pulling up for the day) has turned the Boardwalk into what amounts to a rundown bus stop of sorts.
It’s not a place conducive to a family vacation.
For a comparison, in Las Vegas there are other attractions, from high-end shopping to an excursion to the Hoover Dam — plus the casinos are larger, grander, and more like beautiful self contained neighborhoods, where you can gamble if you want, but there is also other stuff to do.
A husband could easily talk his wife into spending the day at the Venetian or some other high-end property on the Strip, but nobody is talking their wife into spending the day at the Trump Taj Mahal to check out the décor and hit the spa and go shopping.
What Atlantic City needs to do
Here is my generalized five-point plan for AC:
- Get used to the fact that there will only be 5 or 6 casinos, and live with the short term negatives this will bring about. The only way to breathe new life into this area is by cutting out the tumors.
- Turn at least one shuttered casino into a mega mall. Not only can a mall replace lost casino jobs, but it also allows all demographics a chance at employment and can act as an attractant for families.
- Turn at least one shuttered casino into a family friendly hotel/amusement park. Why can’t there be a Six Flags or similar type park on the Boardwalk?
- Use the broken windows approach from New York City and start by cleaning up the casinos exterior and the Boardwalk itself. Let it be known that crime and degeneracy is not going to fly.
- Make vendor licenses a coveted item. This one plays off of #4, as I think we need to make sure that the people pulling the rickshaws and trying to hock their wares are desirables for a family friendly vacation area.
