Viva Las Vegas, Post 3: Taken Hostage

In order to obtain the cheap Cirque du Soleil "KA" tickets we had paid for at the Excalibur the night before, on Saturday morning we had to go to the new Grandview Resort in Vegas and be shown around with a group of other tourists whilst being fed breakfast. That morning Ben went back to the airport to collect our hire car for the next two days, so we declined the offer of a shuttle bus pick-up and elected to drive ourselves to the resort for our 10:30am appointment.

We understood the aim of the promotion was to encourage us to stay there the next time we were in Vegas, or perhaps recommend it to friends. That's what Natasha led us to believe, anyway. This is what actually transpired - and, just for fun, I'll tell it from the perspective of our dear host, the Grandview Resort...

1. (Friday afternoon) Lure young couple (subsequently referred to as "hostages") into agreeing to a breakfast tour of the Grandview Resort by selling them cheap tickets to KA (which they will only be given after the tour). Promise them that they can get tickets for the later performance of KA (9:30pm instead of 7pm) - crucial to their acceptance of the deal as they had already pre-booked tickets to The Lion King at 4pm the same day.

2. When asked whether there will be other people there, assure them that hundreds of people are being taken through the hotel each day (this is an exceptionally good example of the avoidance technique disguised as a technically true answer). When asked how long it will take, tell them 2 hours and that this is an overstatement as that way they will be pleased when it most likely takes less time than that.

3. (Saturday morning) Welcome the hostages to the Grandview Resort and sit them in a waiting area with about 20 other people. While they wait, get them to fill out forms providing information such as their personal information and income range.



4. As they fill out the forms, have various well-dressed sales reps go up and introduce themselves to the surrounding couples, each sales rep then leading their assigned couple out of sight. Allow the realisation to gradually dawn on the hostages that they will not be on a group tour, but will actually have their own individual sales rep all to themselves.

5. Introduce to the hostages to their sales rep, a middle aged lady of a very friendly and chatty nature, who was once a teacher and doesn't seem like a scary high-pressure salesperson at all (and indeed wasn't, thankfully).

6. Take the hostages around the corner and let them help themselves to the breakfast/brunch buffet of sandwiches, donuts, pastries, juice and coffee. Take them and their loaded plates into a small room nearby, in which the various groups of three (couple plus sales rep) are seated at little round tables facing a projector screen. Make small talk and give them name tags.

7. Begin the presentation by having the classy blonde woman hosting it get all the hostages to introduce themselves and say where they are from. (Australians are quite a novelty as everyone else is American.) Get them to share their favourite vacation memories.

8. Continue the presentation by having the classy blonde woman show a Powerpoint slide show whilst giving a speech about how it would make very good sense to invest "the money you already spend on vacations" into "something you would actually own".

9. Allow the realisation to dawn on the hostages (probably only the Australian ones; surely the Americans were less gullible due to greater familiarity with this sales technique and the product) that this is NOT a nice low-key tour of a hotel they'd like the hostages to stay at sometime in the future if they so desire. It is actually an attempt to sell the hostages a timeshare. (Look it up now if you're not sure what it is.) Yes, they are trying to SELL (in the most literal sense) the resort to the hostages.

10. Assure the hostages that this company does not believe in hard sell techniques. Assure them that the company is only aiming to present the logical truth: that the thousands of dollars the hostages have already mentally committed to spending on vacations over the next decades could instead be spent on having a portion of the ownership rights of a timeshare apartment. They can thus have an investment that keeps on giving and can even be gifted to descendants in a will, instead of just throwing money down the drain on holiday accommodation year after year.

11. Conclude the presentation by having the classy blonde woman tell a heart-warming story of how her mother, suffering from cancer, was practically brought back to life by a wonderful family holiday. She is still alive today because of it. Impress upon the hostages in a trembling voice that it is these moments, these precious times with family, that are what life is all about. Leave the hostages with the clear impression that these times are impossible to have unless they own a timeshare.

12. Have the individual sales rep take their hostages on a tour of the hotel. Point out aerial photos showing the incredible growth of Las Vegas over the last few decades. Show them the pool and gym. Take them through a timeshare apartment that is - wouldn't they agree? - incredibly stylish and appealing. (It really was very nice.)



13. Take them to another buffet before sitting down to discuss business. Ask about the vacations they are planning to take next year, and use this information to calculate their lifetime vacation expenditure. If the hostages' style of travel is at odds with the timeshare target market's norm, blatantly skew the information to get the highest vacation expenditure possible. For example, estimate a visit to the Galapagos Islands at $3000 for a week and, added to other vaguely potential trips with more reasonable costs, multiply this by the amount of years they could have ahead of them to take vacations (50?) to get an unbelievably warped lifetime vacation expenditure figure to scare the hostages with.

14. For the first time, mention the price of a timeshare. (We can't remember the exact amount, but it was over USD $40000 for a 2 week timeshare, with a special "just for today" of about $37000 with a bonus 4 weeks thrown in. Paid in installments with interest, the total came to a great deal more. Added to this would be the annual maintenance fee of over $700, plus a fee of more than $200 every time we wanted to swap the Vegas timeshare for a vacation in a different location.)

15. After giving the hostages some time alone to discuss this (during which they debated the politest way to say that this style of vacation, and the expense committment that accompanies it, is completely incompatible with their current lifestyle), have the sales rep return to the table and attempt, in a fairly mild and conversational manner, to encourage them to change their mind.

16. Once this seems unlikely, bring a middle-aged male sales rep over to the table who uses slightly more pressure to endeavour to make a sale. After a discussion regarding the amount the monthly payments plus interest add up to, and use of a calculator by a hostage to prove his point, have the male sales rep drop the price to $17000 for one side of the timeshare apartment (it's like a duplex). After further discussion, during which the hostages try to make their disinterest clear so they can get their KA tickets and leave, have the male sales rep drop the price to about $12000 for one side of the timeshare and 2 weeks per year.

17. After what seems like a very long time to the hostages, allow the sales reps to concede that there is nothing that can be done to make them realise what an incredible, life-enhancing opportunity they are walking away from, and show them to stage 1 of the leaving process.

18. Have them met by a European-accented lady who fills out a customer satisfaction survey to record what the hostages thought of the first and second sales reps. Ask the hostages what was the final price they were offered. Upon hearing $12000, offer them the same deal for $4995. (Yes, seriously. Doing this will definitely make them respect your company for being prepared to sell it to them for 10 times that amount.) Sadly escort them to stage 2 of the leaving process when they still insist on declining this amazing deal.

19. Let them wait ages to see the gifting agent to get their KA tickets at stage 2 of the leaving process. They are no longer potential-profit-on-legs, so who cares?

20. Take them into the gifting agent's office to finally get their hard-earned KA tickets. Then break the news to them that the 9:30pm show is already sold out. Sorry, but they'll have to go to the 7pm show. (Refer to point 1 to see why this was not the preferred scenario.)

21. Give them their tickets and... Let... Them... Leave!!!!

22. As they drive off, be sure they are calculating that they just spent 4 hours of their precious vacation on this delightful interlude. Yes, 4 hours instead of 2 hours, an individualised sales ambush instead of a relaxing group tour, a timeshare hard sell instead of a hotel promotion brunch, and their afternoon drive to Red Rock Canyon cancelled due to lack of time.

23. And despite all of that, dear Grandview Resort, know this: we were glad of the opportunity to see a timeshare hard sell in action. It was the funniest experience of our trip. We appreciate the time, food, and human resources you invested in giving us this excellent storytelling fodder without extracting a single cent from us. Thank you for the memory.

The rest of the day went by in a blur of mad rushing about and magnificent theatre experiences. The Lion King, which we saw at Mandalay Bay, was excellent. Friends have been recommending this to us for a couple of years now, and it was definitely very well done. However, we both preferred KA, which we saw at the MGM Grand (and which we missed the first few minutes of, due to the aforementioned mad rushing about to get from TLK to KA in the half hour between them).



I don't know how to describe KA. Think of a show with a massive moving stage (it could go from horizontal to vertical to anywhere in between), almost no dialogue, costumed performers doing unbelievably cool stunts (including aerial and rope work), a brief interlude of the best hand shadow puppetry we've ever seen, fire and fireworks, and some kind of storyline that was much better explained when we read the programme in the shop afterwards. :) It's more about stunts, mood and visual impact than about the storyline - and it certainly blew us away. Click here to see a preview video on the KA website. It's impossible to describe in words, but mind-blowingly awesome and totally recommended!

That night we had dinner at a cafe overlooking the canal inside the Venetian. The Venetian was one of our favourite two hotels/casinos on the Strip (the other was the Bellagio). Its shopping arcade has a fake sky, Italian architecture, and a canal with gondolas...







Ahh, Venice - I mean, Vegas! The thing about Vegas is that you go there knowing that the whole place is manufactured, commercialised, touristy, and oozing money. You don't go there expecting an "off the beaten track" travel experience. It is what it is, and it does a very good job of it. Hence, despite being very different to our usual type of holiday, we absolutely loved it!

To be continued...

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