LAS VEGAS Hard Rock International opened Sept. 5 its second Sin City branch – a three-level, 42,000-square-foot “cafe,” complete with 950 dining seats, a 1,000-chair concert hall and three guest-facing interactive technologies. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
A mecca for showcasing independent fine-dining restaurants for more than a decade, this city, with the opening of Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegas II, now is also home to two major chain flagship properties, as the new Hard Rock’s debut follows by nine months the unveiling of Viva McDonald’s, a 185-seat vanguard venue from McDonald’s Corp. Among other touches, Viva McDonald’s has numerous display screens, some as large as 10-feet-by-23-feet, playing content ranging from McDonald’s product information to programming from the likes of The Discovery Channel. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
The new Hard Rock Cafe on Las Vegas Boulevard, or “The Strip” as it is known worldwide, is in the Showcase Mall, next to the MGM Grand and adjacent to the Monte Carlo hotel-casino, and it is a short drive from the established cafe at the Hard Rock Hotel on Paradise Road. There are no plans to close the Paradise Road location, according to officials of Seminole Hard Rock Entertainment Inc. of Orlando, Fla., owner of Hard Rock International and its namesake chain with 11 hotels and casinos and 127 cafes worldwide, including nearly 50 in the United States. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Beyond its grand scale and price tag, details about which the company would not disclose, the newest Hard Rock Cafe stands out from its chain siblings by virtue of its suite of guest-operated technologies known collectively as “Hard Rock Interactive.” Those new technology applications were inspired by Hard Rock’s year-old “Memo2.0” website highlighting a digitized sampling of the 38-year-old enterprise’s renowned collection of rock memorabilia. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Joe Tenczar, the chain’s senior director of technology and chief information officer, said Hard Rock Interactive is intended to entertain and inform guests while putting a spotlight on the chain’s collection of famous artists’ instruments, clothing, stage props, and other distinctive personal or organizational mementos of life in the music industry. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Anchoring the new technology, at least in terms of turning heads, is Rock Wall, a 14-foot-wide-by-4-foot-high touch-screen interface for manipulating images and videos associated with the memorabilia collection. Hard Rock partnered with Technomedia Systems and Obscura Digital to create the system that relies on Stewart Film glass, Christie Projectors and “a slew of computing power,” Tenczar explained. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
The projected images appearing on the “wall” can be selected, moved and resized by up to six users at one time. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Tenczar said “the greatest Rock Wall [deployment] challenge was probably the logistics of installation [involving] a single piece of Stewart Film glass hoisted in on a crane over power lines [and] under a patio roof—on the Vegas Strip!” —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Seven tables using Microsoft Corp. Surface technology—two in VIP areas and five in public sections—make up the second piece of Hard Rock’s interactive technology portfolio. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Surface technology relies on cameras to sense objects, touch and hand gestures on or above the 30-inch tabletop display, which can be used by multiple patrons to launch and navigate custom applications created by Hard Rock and Vertigo. One such program permits users to “deep zoom,” or virtually tour the world to select a Hard Rock location, explore images on the exterior and interior of the chosen cafe and then drill down through imagery and information tied to the memorabilia housed in that particular branch. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
“Booth Interactive,” as the chain refers to its third guest-operated technology, puts 19-inch Elo touch-screen displays in 38 restaurant booths so that diners can access a multimedia catalog of more than 1,300 of the chain’s thousands of memorabilia items, among other uses. Tenczar said each touch screen is powered by a computer on a card, or so-called “server blade,” and that all 38 cards are housed on a single chassis in the cafe’s computer room. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
The booth touchscreens also let guests access the in-house music-video system to cast a vote to determine the next song; search for memorabilia linked to artists on the music-video playlist; and browse among images and text tied to merchandise for sale in the nearby Rock Shop. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
The recently reopened Dallas Hard Rock Cafe has 10 tables with Booth Interactive. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Tenczar pointed out that the new Las Vegas complex is “the only Hard Rock Cafe in existence with a full-time information technology person.” In addition to the new interactive technology, Las Vegas II is a big IT shop in its own right, he said, adding that the location has 39 point-of-sale-system terminals, an 18-screen kitchen-display system and complimentary high-speed wireless Internet access, or Wi-Fi, for guests, among other tools and amenities. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Caring and feeding for the newest Hard Rock requires an IT pro who can “troubleshoot network issues and change projector bulbs,” the CIO noted, adding that he hired Sean Durand to fill the post. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
For its U.S. restaurant operations, Hard Rock Cafe had estimated 2008 systemwide food and beverage sales of about $180 million, according to the Nation’s Restaurant News Second 100 census. Though the new Las Vegas cafe is expected to generate substantially higher foodservice sales than is typical for the chain, its U.S. systemwide estimated sales per unit, as reported in Second 100, was about $4.1 million. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
Grand openings, such as that of the new Hard Rock Cafe, while good for keeping Las Vegas in the news, likely are not appreciated by established competitors in that city, as sales-driving visitor traffic has been down in 2009. Year to date through June, the most recent month for which information is available, total visitor traffic to Las Vegas was off by 6.8 percent, versus 2008, the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority said. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
While maintaining that deploying technology like Rock Wall, Surface and Booth Interactive “is not something restaurant companies would normally do,” Tenczar said Hard Rock Cafe embraced the pricey proposition. —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
“We’re into story telling and all about delivering a kick-ass experience,” he said.— [email protected] —Looking to help reverse negative visitor traffic trends in this famous gambling and dining destination,
