The Modern Las Vegas Casino-Hotel: The Paradigmatic New Means of Consumption

Special Issue

Abstract

This essay argues that the Las Vegas Casino-hotel is a paradigm for the new means of consumption. The new means of consumption are designed to attract and service large numbers of customers by rationalizing their operations while enchanting their setting. Casino-hotels create a spectacular environment usually by simulating well-known attractions from the past, present, or imagined future. Further, they implode boundaries between gambling, shopping , travel and entertainment thereby making it possible for gamblers to bring their families, to reduce the regrets associated with excessive gambling by normalizing it, and to increase expenditures on things that are peripheral to gambling. The casino-hotels also manipulate time and space to create settings in which time seems not to matter and spatial boundaries to consumption are eliminated. Last, through the “comp” system they create incentives for those who frequently gamble large sums of money. As a result, the Las Vegas casino-hotel increases the likelihood that guests will spend more than is prudent.