Airlines are swapping smaller planes for larger ones, readying for a busy weekend and altogether busier May at McCarran International Airport.
Cabbies are asking regulators for permission to dispatch more taxis to roam the roads.
VIP nightclub tables are going fast. Strip clubs are adding security. Ticket brokers expect to make a windfall.
“It’s the dream card fight we haven’t seen in years,” said Don Vaccaro, CEO of Connecticut-based ticket selling site TicketNetwork, the biggest since at least Holyfield and Tyson took to the ring in 1997.
There may just be 16,800 or so seats inside the arena, but there’s been a frenzy to book all of Las Vegas’ 150,544 rooms.
A week before the fight, only 20 hotels had rooms still available, according to booking engine Vegas.com — and they aren’t coming cheap.
Even at the aging Riviera casino and hotel, the weekend before it closes for good, rates were $ 758 for next Friday and $ 798 for next Saturday for a standard room before it stopped offering rooms on the site, said Vanessa Doleshal, Vegas.com’s development manager.
Pricing has been a free for all, she said.
What would have been a busy May weekend anyway, especially with the Cinco de Mayo weekend coinciding with the Kentucky Derby and NBA and NHL playoffs, is reaching a boiling point.
“I think it will be an excellent Saturday night for us,” said Peter Feinstein, managing partner of Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club, which bills itself as the area’s largest strip club at 70,000 square feet.
It’ll be even better if he’s ultimately allowed to show the fight in the club’s 300-seat showroom, he said. It’s something he’s been told he can’t do per MGM Grand’s agreement giving it the exclusive rights to show the fight live at its 13 Las Vegas properties, although MGM has said the ban only applied to competing casino-hotels in the area.
Either way, “it’s going to be a pretty intense crowd,” Feinstein said, so he’s boosting his security by 25 percent.
For XS nightclub at Encore, it’s bound to be one of the biggest, most VIP-filled nights it’s seen. The club is tripling to 245 the number of tables that can be reserved for pricey (try $ 2,000 to $ 50,000) bottle service.
Jessie Waits, managing partner of the club, said he’s almost sold out.
Las Vegas bullish on Mayweather-Pacquiao - Salt Lake Tribune
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