Vol. 4, No. 5, May 2007
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Q & A Mark Juliano, Chief Operating Officer, Trump Entertainment Resorts
Experience is king in Atlantic City, and few casino executives have more than Mark Juliano. From his start as a captain in the showroom at Resorts International until he became president of Caesars Atlantic City, Juliano’s Atlantic City pedigree had been golden. When he was appointed president of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 2003, he seemingly had reached the pinnacle of his profession. Yet, when a reorganized Trump Entertainment Resorts came looking for an operational expert with Atlantic City experience, he jumped at the chance to return to the Boardwalk. As COO of Trump Entertainment Resorts, Juliano has been able to refocus the company on profitable market segments, improve operations and give employees confidence that the new company would indeed creep back to the top of the Atlantic City market. He spoke with Casino Connection Editor Roger Gros and Associate Editor Beth Joseph at his office in Trump Taj Mahal in late March, prior to the vote of Trump Plaza casino floor personnel to allow the UAW union to organize them.
Casino Connection: Mark, you had one of the best jobs in the industry, the president of Caesars Palace. There are a lot of people who would give their right arm for that job. Why did you decide to leave and come back to Atlantic City and work for Trump ?
Juliano: Well, one thing you are right about, being the president of Caesars Palace is probably one of the greatest jobs in the world, and I certainly had a lot of fun doing that. But my family and I are from the East Coast, and when we went out to Las Vegas we never really considered it to be a permanent move. So, when the opportunity came up to work for Trump, which is in the midst of a reorganization—which is kind of the thing that I like to do—I thought it was a good opportunity to both do that and move my family back home.
Tell us what kind of shape you found the Trump properties in when you got back here.
There were some things that were worse than I thought they were going to be and some things were much better. One of the positive things I found was that the employees still had a great attitude and had a great sense of pride working for the Trump organization, particularly Mr. Trump.
One of the things that I found that was pretty easy to change was that people here were very concerned about different things than I was concerned about. They were really concerned about measuring success by quantity rather than quality. So we tried to focus on the quality of the customers, not the number, so it really didn’t matter how many bus passengers, or how many cars parked or what your occupancy was, it mattered more to us who was driving those cars, who was arriving by bus and who was staying in the room. That shift from quantity to quality was important.
I came into an organization that for many years was in a survival mode, and all of a sudden they had access to what for them was an enormous amount of capital. They were making that shift from survival to growth, and that was very interesting to watch, and it still is.
Do you think you have arrived at that point yet where you have the quality that you want, or are you ramping that up?
We are still definitely ramping that up, and I think that it is important to note all that has occurred without the benefit of really good technology. We are calling this year our year of technology, because all of our core systems will be compatible. We will be introducing a yield management system. We have been introducing a customer data warehouse along with a one-card program. These are all things that we have never done before, and a lot of these things we have been doing manually and rather inefficiently. So, I think that move to quality will be aided by this new technology.
The employees have been very loyal through the years, especially when they were in that “survival mode.” What have you done to instill the pride and confidence that this is a growing company?
Number one, we started to talk to them about it, and they were rather reluctant to believe that this was actually going to happen. But then they started to see it happen. They started to see the construction walls go up, and recently they have seen them come down, and behind them are really new and exciting things.
Certainly the Taj Mahal is the flagship. The new addition is going up. What is the timetable for that?
July 2008, we will have an additional 800 rooms.
What are some of the other additions that are coming along with that?
Right now we are in the midst of renovating the casino floor. We already have renovated our Asian pit and added a lounge called Ego. We will be relocating our gourmet restaurants from the convention level down to the main concourse right off of the casino, which we think will build a lot of synergy and a lot of energy. The walkway from our parking garage through the atrium and down into the buffet and convention area, which we are calling Spice Road, will be completely renovated by the beginning of May. It will include two or three new food outlets along with a new coffee shop. The gourmet restaurants where they exist now will be turned into meeting space.
You are going to concentrate on the meetings and convention business, correct?
Yes, particularly since we are adding these 800 rooms. The 2,000-room inventory that we will have will require us to support it with a lot of convention and retail business.
Ten years ago, Trump Plaza and Caesars produced equal revenue, and they were up among the top earners in the city. Now, Trump Plaza is almost near the bottom. How did that happen and what are you going to do to reverse that?
When I talk to the employees, I tell them how strange it is for me to be talking to Trump Plaza employees, because when I would talk to the Caesars employees 15 years ago, I would say we really have to make sure we beat the Plaza this month. Now, I am telling the Plaza employees we really have to try to catch up to Caesars.
I think what happened was that there was really just a lack of capital invested into the property for a very long time, and we are now just getting it to the point where it is clean and modern and fresh-looking.
Is the configuration of that property somewhat of a challenge with the east wing—the old Penthouse property—and that somewhat strange layout that casino always had?
I don’t think the east casino part of it is too difficult, because quite frankly, we are going to be leasing that east casino to a restaurateur soon. But there is a vertical aspect to it that is rather difficult because it is narrow and it is constrained by the real estate. But we are dealing with it and I don’t foresee that changing.
Trump Marina: Has that really stabilized now? It was uncertain what was going to become of that property for so long.
The Marina is a fairly consistent performer. Of our three properties, that really has received the least amount of capital. Our capital spend there, we think, will be next year. We are still in the design and development stage. It has the luxury of being on the water, it has the luxury of the exclusivity and the privacy of being in the marina. It’s very popular.
Let’s talk about some of the issues that are facing Atlantic City. The smoking issue is something that was very contentious over the winter. Do you think that allowing smoking on 25 percent of the floor is a fair compromise, and something you can live with?
We are going to have to live with it, and I do think it was a fair compromise. The whole situation caught us by surprise, but I think the reality of smoking in casinos is that at some point it is not going to be allowed. We are prepared to deal with that. Some of our customers are not prepared to deal with that, but they will have to, so we are watching it very closely.
On the 15th of April, we will start to segregate the casino by signage, and we will see how customers react to that. Then, we will decide whether we are actually going to build permanent segregated areas. Quite frankly, we are not sure. It is not too unreasonable to think that the federal government at some point will get involved.
Are slots in Pennsylvania impacting you as much as you anticipated?
They are impacting us as we anticipated, and in the areas that we anticipated. It is obviously a convenience factor, and I think that the impact in February was exacerbated because of the weather. Now, we have seen the last two weeks in February and March rebound nicely, so I think that it will be impactful, and I think that we will watch it closely, but I do not think it is something that we are not going to be able to absorb.
What are you saying to the Trump Plaza dealers now as they run up to this election (union vote)?
We have created a good environment for people to work, and since the company has been restructured we have been very careful to review all of our compensation and our work environment situations. Over the past five to six years, because of business conditions and the financial condition that the company was in, we had to, unfortunately, take some things away from the employees. We have slowly been adding them back as the company becomes healthy financially.
We are happy to do it and we are happy to continue to do it, and we want to be able to do it for all of our employees, because it is the right thing to do. Quite frankly, we are doing that as part of management because we think that it is a smart thing to do from a business perspective, not because a union is telling us that we have to.
Do you think that there is going to be a long-term endeavor here by the unions trying to organize the dealers in Atlantic City, or is this going to be another one of those efforts that will go away again for several years?
I obviously think it will depend on how our dealers respond to it, but I think a union like the UAW, which has been slowly losing membership, needs to find somewhere where they can hope to survive as an organization. They have not been a great help to the auto industry and we would hope that our dealers would realize that. But this is their decision to make, and we just want to provide them with the facts and make sure that they understand exactly what the situation is. Whatever there decision will be, we are there to support them.
