This past weekend, the most lavish club in Las Vegas, Hakkasan, opened. With its staggering 80,000 square feet and steep $100 million in renovation cost, this luxurious venue was built with big spenders in mind. Well Hakkasan’s investment seems to already be paying off, as one clubber (if you’d even call him that) spent a staggering $600,000 in one night. Just to put it in perspective, the average sales price of a home in the United States (as reported for February 2013) is $152,000. That’s enough to purchase 4 homes. 4! I’ll just let that sink in for a minute…
The fact that someone can spend so much in one night is mind boggling and to top it off it only furthers the truth that clubs are more focused on pleasing the bottle service high rollers rather than the average clubber. It’s sad that such a magnificent venue with its incredible roster of artists was not built for the likes of you and me, the ones truly enjoying the music, but rather for those with the deeper wallets. To reinforce the point I’m making all you have to do is look at the events that happened the first night, where security were told to deny entrance to anyone wearing a deadmau5, until the mau5 himself had to intervene and force the hand of the venue. I realize, like every other business, Hakkasan is seeking to maximize its investment by returning the highest profit per attendent, but it’s just disheartening that such good music is going to waste. And on that note I’ll leave you with one of Avicii’s few good quotes:
“The VIP [club] crowd tends to be less energetic […] If you are able to go out and spend $2 million a night in a nightclub and then get laid, it doesn’t add anything for their…what do you call it, what you leave after when you die?”
Source: Las Vegas Sun, Statistic Brain