Palazzo Hotel Casino begins hiring 4,000 workers in Las Vegas

The company said it expected some 50,000 applicants, or about 13 per available position, at its newest Las Vegas Strip property set to open beside The Venetian. Mike Gentry, vice president of human resources for The Venetian and Palazzo, said some 700 to 1,000 Venetian employees would apply to make the switch to the Palazzo, meaning those positions would need to be refilled.

The hiring process for the Palazzo employees commences the next wave of new Las Vegas hotel-casinos after the 2005 openings of Wynn Las Vegas and South Point and the opening of the Red Rock hotel-casino off the Strip in April 2006. Palazzo’s opening will be followed by the us$ 2.1 billion Encore, a sister property to Wynn Las Vegas, in 2009, and MGM Mirage’s us$ 7.4 billion CityCenter, also in 2009.

On a smaller scale, the first tower of the non-gambling Trump International Hotel & Tower opens next year as will Station Casino’s us$ 650 million Aliante Station in North Las Vegas. Boyd Gaming Corp.’s us$ 4.8 billion, 5,000-room Echelon project broke ground last week but is not expected to open until 2010.

In a February report to investors, Wall Street firm Deutsche Bank said the Las Vegas casino industry will need to fill some 113,500 positions by 2012.

The report was completed before two other major developments were announced. The New York-based Elad Group announced plans in May to replace the New Frontier with a us$ 5 billion resort. Earlier this month MGM Mirage and Kerzner International announced a multibillion dollar joint-venture development on the Strip’s north end. "We’re hitting the market at just the right time," Gentry said.