The Movable Buffet: Rallying with Marilyn Winn

Reporting from Las Vegas

Every Friday afternoon, Marilyn Winn, president of three Strip resorts — Paris, Bally’s and Planet Hollywood — attends two brief employee rallies. At 2:30 there is the one at Bally’s and then she walks straight to the one at Paris (the resorts are internally connected), where the ritual repeats at 3.

Being responsible for about 10,000 employees makes Winn a powerful executive in the Vegas casino business as well as one of a tiny elite group of women who holds a top position at a Strip resort. But compared with other casino presidents on the Strip, Winn is a relative unknown. On her properties there are no poker rooms or sandwiches named after her. She rarely walks red carpets. “I care about what is going on inside,” she says. “My job is to make money for Harrah’s Entertainment by creating a great climate for customers and employees.”

Diminutive, with short hair and an abundance of energy, Winn’s gait is almost a jog as she moves between the casinos. Her energy is not haste. She stops to peek into the recently opened Barry Manilow store. The store has a window that looks out on the registration desk at Paris, where the singer headlines. “I really like how this came out,” she says.

At each rally a couple hundred employees dance as a DJ plays. People dance in groups by department, each marked by a different uniform: cocktail servers in one space, food handlers in another with casino dealers gathered in the back. At the Bally’s rally, employees, wearing party hats as cone breasts, sing to a karaoke of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” with lyrics revised to express how they strive to perfect their work on the resort’s customer service program.

The focus of these Friday events and of Winn is customer service. At Harrah’s service is not an abstract quality but a measurable one. “Every week we survey our customers. Customer service is very specific at Harrah’s, systematic.” The awards also are not abstract; employees gain points that can be redeemed for iPads or pool equipment.

So it is to whooping applause that Winn gets up and says a few words, congratulating the employees at both rallies for achieving the top service rating. Winn brought the rallies to Paris and Bally’s when they became Harrah’s acquisitions in 2005. “Every property has the goal to improve service. This is just one way that we do it. We also use mystery shoppers to verify we are getting the service we want and we train our employees to our standards. But on Friday afternoons it is fun to get a little goofy.”

Before taking over the presidency of Planet Hollywood in February, just after Harrah’s purchased that property, Winn was president of the Rio casino where Penn & Teller headline. Penn Jilette, not known for praising authority figures, recalls Winn with special fondness:

“I bumped into Marilyn Winn at a charity thing. We had just negotiated an extension on our contract at the Rio. She said, ‘You know, you could have gotten more money out of us, we love you.’ I said, ‘You could have gotten us cheaper, we love you.’ Could you ever have had a better boss than that? She is simply the best boss we’ve ever had.”

After getting her master’s in education, Winn moved to Las Vegas as a young mother in 1986. Her early goals did not include casinos — “I thought I would either be in retail or teach.” Nonetheless, she got a job in 1987 as a training manager on the Strip at the Holiday Casino. There she was mentored by one of the pioneer female casino owners in Vegas history, Claudine Williams. “She was an inspiration,” Winn says of Williams, who died recently. The Holiday eventually became Harrah’s. Winn worked a variety of jobs, including stints in human resources and running a casino in Louisiana.

She says she never experienced substantial gender discrimination in gambling, despite the preponderance of men in the top slots of Strip resorts. “I agree there have been very few women. But I have never felt a glass ceiling. In this business you can be feminine and say ‘No’ very easily.”

Still, being a woman in the casino business is not easy. “This is a hard job to do, for example, and be a regular mom,” says Winn, who is married. “When my daughter, who just graduated college, was in first grade and needed me to drive carpool she had to schedule it with my secretary. She is a confident and independent person now. She had a different model than most of motherhood.”

Like other executives on the Strip, these days she is focused on getting her properties to the other side of the recession. “Our occupancy has always been close to 90% throughout the last two years. Our problem today is room rates. Room rates have not yet stabilized. And people are playing but they are not betting as much. But I think by the end of the year we are going to be coming out.”

Winn insists the job is the reward. And rare is the time she has publicly enjoyed the perks of her position. One exception happened in January as Harrah’s was still in the process of purchasing Planet Hollywood. Winn arrived at the casino and was invited on stage to offer a short address. She took the stage with a beaming smile. “What was great was that as a little girl I used to watch Miss America with my grandmother. I never imagined I could one day be on stage with all the contestants.”

Then she immediately notes that for the Miss USA event — which by coincidence had just broadcast from Planet Hollywood — the front-row tickets were reserved for regular Harrah’s customers. “We really try to always put the customers first.”

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