Given how important I think authenticity is in delivering a great experience you may be surprised to hear that I love Las Vegas. I don’t mean old classic Vegas either. I mean every brand new themed mega hotel/resort/casino complex. Thinking that I should feel like I’m in Paris while I’m in the Paris Hotel is missing the point. In reality it’s the manufacturedness of the experience that I appreciate. The same techniques and tools that are in use everywhere at Disneyland are applied all over Las Vegas. It’s this focus on creating an artificial experience that I find fascinating, and fun. Because the metric is so clear (revenue) and the margins so large, the casinos are relentless innovators in terms of attracting and retaining customers, not to mention extracting every last dime and still making sure customers have a good experience and come back for repeat business.

That said, not all experiences are created equal. Over the past decade as Vegas embraced its core strength – entertainment for adults – more and more high end themed hotels have been built including Paris, Venetian, Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, etc. that try to mine this vein directly. Preceeding these high end creations (all arriving in the late 90’s) was Treasure Island, the pirate themed hotel and casino built in 1993. As the bar kept getting raised by later construction Treasure Island seemed more and more dated. A remodel in 1999 still wasn’t able to keep it competitive. A couple of year’s ago I noticed that the sign outside Treasure Island all of a sudden said “TI”. I didn’t give it much thought other than to note that it looked out of place and amateurish. This past trip I actually went inside.

The place wasn’t actually that bad. It was smaller and more cramped but basically felt like any of the top quality casinos in terms of the detail. Unfortunately the odd half-way rebranding made the whole experience weird. As best I can tell they went from pirates to sirens. I would guess the thought went something like this: “We’re dated and we want to be relevant. Let’s rebrand the whole place. But we only have a small budget. This stuff is expensive. No problem, we’ll stick with ocean, water, etc. but just lose the pirates and add sexy girls. Instantly we’ve moved from childhood fantasy to adult fantasy. And we can do it on the cheap!” The only problem of course is that it looks more like they slapped a new (ugly) logo all over the place and put sirens on the pirate ship “extravaganza” in front of the hotel instead of the pirates that used to inhabit the show. And besides, what are sirens doing on the boat anyway. Aren’t they supposed to be on an island singing trying to get the boat to smash into the cliffs below?

I’m not saying this is an easy problem to fix. But I think if they didn’t have the money to really redo the theme of the hotel properly they should have focused more on making the theme deeper and more interesting. Right now it just feels incoherent. And in an era of insanely popular Johnny Depp pirate movies (attended by children and adults) it seems not just odd but schizophrenic to abandon the pirate theme thinking that the “TI” experience will attract a more valuable demographic. You need to go with your strengths. And now it feels like their only strength is trying to be something they’re not.