MGM Chairman and CEO Bill Hornbuckle sent a simple message to his company this week after exorbitant prices kept people away from its Las Vegas hotels: “Shame on us.”
In an earnings call Wednesday, Hornbuckle said the company had “corrected the pricing” of its resorts after a summer of backlash over high charges, including the “infamous” $26 bottle of Fiji water at the Aria hotel.
He also cited Starbucks’ $12 coffee at Excalibur as an example of how the company had not been attentive to customer needs.
“We should have been more sensitive to the overall experience at a place like Excalibur,” he said on the call, according to KLAS.
“You can’t have a $29 room and a $12 coffee. We lost control of the narrative over the summer,” Hornbuckle continued. “I think we would all agree with that in retrospect.”
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported that the city experienced a difficult summer, with an 11 percent year-over-year drop in visitors in June, followed by a 6.7 percent drop in August.
Hornbuckle attributed the decline in tourism to several factors, including 400,000 fewer travelers to Las Vegas on Spirit Airlines, a decline in Southern California drive-in visitors and continued declines in international travel following the Trump administration’s comments and tariff policies beginning in February, according to KLAS.
“July for everyone in the community was a difficult month. The summer was difficult,” Hornbuckle said.
But things have changed since then, he added, and the tourism giant could even surpass last year’s “historic fourth quarter” numbers based on bookings.
Jonathan Halkyard, MGM’s chief financial officer and treasurer, said Wednesday that the company reviewed what customers are actually willing to pay for certain goods and services, and has since implemented about 90 percent of those adjustments.
While fees like resort and parking remain in place, these prices have been adjusted, Hornbuckle said.
MGM’s net revenue fell to $2 billion in the third quarter, below 2024, primarily due to room renovations at the MGM Grand Las Vegas, the company said.
Profits at other MGM properties in Las Vegas also fell from $731 million in September 2024 to $601 million this year.