Resorts World Las Vegas Flooded With 85K Applicants for 6K Jobs

Posted on: February 8, 2021, 02:55h. 

Last updated on: February 9, 2021, 08:04h.

Larry Henry Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Gaming Business, Legislation, Politics, Regulation.

A hotel-casino set to open this summer on the Las Vegas Strip is being swamped with job applications. This comes as the coronavirus pandemic has dealt a sharp blow to Southern Nevada’s tourism economy.

Resorts World Las Vegas
Resorts World Las Vegas towers over a construction wall on the Las Vegas Strip. The resort is set to open in the summer. (Image: The Edge Markets)

About 85,000 people have applied for 6,000 jobs at Resorts World Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That averages out to about 14 applicants for every job.

In the fall, Resorts World executive Lori Calderon announced on LinkedIn that the resort would begin to extend job interview invitations in early December.

Calderon, executive director of talent acquisition and community engagement, encouraged those seeking a job to create a profile on the Resorts World website. On the site, applicants could search for job titles and chat with a virtual recruiter.

At that time, people began signing in to apply for jobs ranging from locksmith to card dealer.

Scott Sibella, president of Resorts World Las Vegas, told KSNV-TV  in the fall that the 3,500-room property will open in the summer of 2021 even if the pandemic is not under control.

“We hope COVID is behind us,” he said. “If COVID isn’t behind us, we hope it is less restricted. But we’re opening next summer either way.”

‘A Lot of Healing’

Jeremy Aguero of Applied Analysis told the newspaper the large number applicants demonstrates the damage COVID-19 has done to the economy. 

We have a lot of healing to do,” he said.

The damage is reflected in job-loss figures. In December, 300,700 leisure and hospitality jobs were reported in Nevada. This is 14 percent lower than the same month in 2019, the newspaper reported.

These job losses can be traced to the severe slump in tourism. Since the onset of the coronavirus in March, McCarran International Airport has lost 29 million arriving and departing passengers. This is significant for a tourism-dependent city built in a remote desert location. The nearest large metropolitan area, Los Angeles, is at least four hours away by car. Phoenix is five hours away.

Without conventions and large events, resorts in the area are having trouble filling up hotel rooms. The weekend hotel occupancy rate in Las Vegas was 45.4 percent in December. During the middle of the week, the occupancy rate dropped to 25 percent. In response, some hotel-casinos on the Strip have closed all or part of their operations during the slow middle of the week.

Resorts World Expansion 

The $4.3 billion Resorts World Las Vegas is the most expensive hotel-casino on the Strip, exceeding the $4.18 billion Cosmopolitan. 

Resorts World is being built near Circus Circus and Slots-A-Fun on the west side of the Strip. Resorts World is on the site of the now-demolished Stardust hotel-casino, a Mob-connected property at the center of Nicholas Pileggi’s 1995 nonfiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas. The book was the basis for the Las Vegas Mafia movie Casino.

As the Malaysia-based Genting Group prepares to open Resorts World Las Vegas, the company is eyeing the Newburgh Mall in upstate New York for a gaming space with video lottery terminals. The company recently announced plans to turn a former department store into a commercial gaming space. Newburgh is about 60 miles north of New York City.