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CNBC Transcript: Wynn Resorts, Sands and MGM Resorts CEOs Speak with Contessa Brewer from the CNBC Evolve Global Summit

CNBC

The following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Craig Billings, Wynn Resorts CEO, Robert Goldstein, Sands Chairman and CEO, and Bill Hornbuckle, MGM Resorts International CEO, from the CNBC Evolve Global Summit, which took place today, Wednesday, July 13th. Video from the interview will be available at cnbc.com/evolve. 

All references must be sourced to the CNBC Evolve Global Summit.

CONTESSA BREWER: So I want to thank you for joining me today. Part of the reason I wanted to invite you, Craig billings, Bill Hornbuckle, Rob Goldstein, to this conversation is because you’re all leading companies that are iconic global casino brands whose imprint of the founders are clearly visible, not just in your properties or just in Las Vegas but around the world. I guess I’ll just begin with can you set the scene for me about where we are when we know that people are here and they’re enjoying what Las Vegas has to offer and the demand is persistent in spite of rising inflationary pressures. Bill, what are you seeing – what do you see for the next half of the year and where’s the industry going? 

BILL HORNBUCKLE: I do believe there’s been a change. I do believe that how people are going to experiences how they think about travel, how they think about whether there was initially Covid money or not, how they think about what they want to do with their free time is a creed to Las Vegas and to us in a large way. And we’re seeing it. Is there a recession around the corner? Time to tell. You wouldn’t know by looking at this place last night, or what we’ve experienced over the last couple of quarters. And I think about the environment we’re in today in employment and getting people to come to work. It’s an interesting environment that we’re all in. But I’m extremely optimistic about the space, about the experience economy, and where we belong in it. And so you know, I’m very positive, generally speaking.

BREWER: What are you seeing right now, Craig?

CRAIG BILLINGS: We spent much of the Covid period really just continuing to invest. Invest in our people, invest in our business, and that’s borne fruit. And I think we see that every day both in our customer satisfaction surveys and in our numbers. So it’s been great over the course of the past few months. On the founder point that you raised, you know, obviously, our founder changed very rapidly. Our founder left very rapidly. And for us, it was really there were kind of three buckets of things that we had to think about. The first was what needed to change very quickly – certain points on governance, the board, etc. The second is that which would never change, really that founder’s mindset, that sense of ownership all the way down to the line level, accountability and our design and development capabilities. And then that which we could evolve. And that’s really a multi-year journey. And so much of what we’ve seen over the course of the past six months is the fruit of that evolution. So you see it in our food and beverage program, you see it in the way we use social media, you see it in our entertainment program. And so we’ve started to see, you know, that bear fruit and really it’s early days in that evolution.

BREWER: What do you think?

ROB GOLDSTEIN: Well, I’m not in Las Vegas anymore. We sold our properties as you well know, and these guys know. Thrilled to see the rebound of Las Vegas. I’ve been a citizen here for almost 30 years and very proud of the city. A huge fan of it. We are experiencing a different situation because we’re Asia- bound. Macao we both have properties – all of us have properties there and it’s struggling, as you know. For me, having been with Sheldon Adelson for decades, it’s a very difficult time for us emotionally. We sold Las Vegas, it was very hard for me. We sold it for different reasons than people understand. And I think, you know, Sheldon did something that I’ll never forget during the Covid time when everybody else was laying people off and I had made a proposal to the board to follow suit. And he tapped me on the shoulder like this. He said, “Rob, not doing that.” I said, “Not doing what?” He said, “I’m not laying people off.” I thought he was confused. So I took him aside explained to him. He said, “I’m not confused.” He said, “I’m not laying people off.” He had a very strong belief in culture and people. And that today resonates with us since we succeed him and try carry on the legacy both in Macao and Singapore. Maybe again in the U.S. at some point.

BREWER: But it’s really expensive. I mean, if you’re in an industry that –

GOLDSTEIN: Yes, very expensive. When I told him how much it was, he was very sweet. He said, “Rob I can afford it. We can afford it.” And he said, “I’m not going to fire people. They have made me very wealthy, it’s my time to give back to them.” And Sheldon, I had the privilege of watching him on two fronts. Very much a believer in culture and longevity and sustainability with the staff, with the people working with us. And secondly, a big believer in strategic thinking. Sheldon never did anything – whether it being Macao, Singapore, Pennsylvania, Las Vegas, any jurisdiction we tried to go to his first thought was, “what do I bring the table strategically? Why am I different?” And he did it here in Las Vegas and he authored this whole MICE strategy which people thought was hilarious –

BREWER: Which is basically convention business, right? Making this –

GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, I’m sorry. Yes, convention-based group business was Sheldon’s calling card. He grew up in it through Comdex. But my point is all these people we are referencing had a strong strategic perspective of a people, culture thought process. And say what you want about those. Different people have different perspectives. And I think so the fellas that we all came to work for they saw things a different way. They had huge vision and a huge appetite for risk.  

BILLINGS: Steve was a true founder at heart in every way. And you know, the way that he ran the business was as a founder. Very high accountability, very small corporate staff. And you have to make sure that that continues. And you have to actually take that legacy, be a steward to that legacy, and evolve it. And I think Rob, you said that, too. You can’t be afraid to evolve it and make sure that you can meet changing consumer needs and changing consumer trends and stay relevant. But you have to maintain the core and soul of who the business is and who the team is.

BREWER: Did that make a difference for Wynn when we saw this massive hiring squeeze when everybody around the nation were desperate for workers? Did that soul of Wynn make a difference in how you were able to retain talent? Attract talent?

BILLINGS: No doubt. No doubt it did. I mean, we similar to what Rob was talking about, we too, didn’t lay anybody off during the shutdown because you can’t reassemble our team in a short period of time. It takes years and years and years to do. And so when we reopened, we actually had a team that was energized, that felt great about where they worked. And our turnover has reflected that.

BREWER: You know, it strikes me too, that you’re seeing all this boom here. I just can’t get over that you can look at Encore Boston Harbor and see that it is out earning any single property you have in Macao. The thought of that before the pandemic would have just been impossible to imagine. That there’s been sort of this reversal of fortune.

HORNBUCKLE: You know what has been interesting in our business I’m sure, you know, technology and Covid drove us to a couple different places. Even if you go look at this gaming floor, and everyone’s doing this. The way we position games just for distance and safety. But we create these unique pods that sit out here now. Well guess what? People enjoy them. And it’s worked. And it’s brought particularly the type of games that are now demonstrate out here, it’s brought millennials to the table in a way that they have not been before in our industry. And so at least we have seen historically, not only here, but universally across all of our properties domestically, we have more millennial business than we’ve ever had by like 20%. It is a compelling and interesting thing.

BREWER: Do you think that the younger people who may not have been really exposed to casinos and gambling before the pandemic, are they drawn by the digital technology? I mean, now there are games where you can sit and only interact with the machine the way that most of us are now used to interacting with our phones, right? So you can sit in a casino where you’re near other people but not actually be interacting with a human being.

BILLINGS: I think when you smash together the proliferation of sports betting and i-gaming, and the demographic that is engaging with sports betting in particular, which is a younger demographic, you think about the fact that all the effort, time and money that we’ve spent as an industry here in Las Vegas, investing in non-gaming amenities and things that bring people here despite the casino, all those are going to come together naturally and have a spillover effect that are going to cause consumers – some consumers – to find an affinity for what’s on the casino floor. I think it’s just a natural happenstance of all of those things.  

BREWER: I’m really interested if the draw is the experience, if that’s the thing that people are hungry for, how does digital play into that yen for experiences?

HORNBUCKLE: Look, for a brand like ours, it gives us a chance to connect 360 days a year. It gives us a chance to have a constant dialogue with a customer. It gives them exposure and ultimately a reward mechanism like any loyalty program to be participating in. Yeah, I can do this. I can bet the Mets at home because I’m from New York and I enjoy the Mets and it ultimately translates into something more for them. It’s pretty straightforward in that context. And it works. It’s big enough scale now. This thing has grown to a point where there is absolute connectivity – the notion of a simple omnichannel relationship with the customer. And what we have all seen is to the extent a customer participates in all three activities, their activity with us is far superior than what it was historically. 

BILLINGS: Look, sports betting isn’t new. I mean people have been betting on sports online for years and years and years. So now you have the opportunity to bet with a brand that you trust and a brand that oftentimes has other physical assets that you can interact with and be entertained by. And so it is a pretty compelling proposition over the longer term. You know, the past couple of years have been interesting for a whole bunch of reasons in sports betting. I think there was a race to get to market and to acquire customers at any cost. I think the industry is becoming increasingly more disciplined in terms of how they approach that, which is great, you know, for us to see. But that omnichannel relationship is important. And I really believe it’s a winner in the long run.  

BREWER: Rob, Sheldon Adelson was such an opponent of internet gambling and invested in it and really was vocal about it and made sure that with all of his political connections, he made it clear where he stood on it. Have you decided to take a very different approach? Have you turned the company in a direction that is very different from what he saw and thought?

GOLDSTEIN: Sheldon, the underpinning of his thinking may be different than most people realize. He was a big believer that young people were at risk. He had young boys. He felt people were on their phone at the ballgame. He felt the wrong people could access it. And Bill mentioned 24 hours a day you can bang one in your phone and lose money. And it bothered Sheldon from a pure moral perspective. I know people don’t want to believe that, they think he was protecting his land base. The fact is our business has been 90% Asia forever. And so it doesn’t affect us because Asia does not have digital gambling. And so it’s a nonevent for us from that perspective. So that was Sheldon’s mindset. Would we go into it? Sure we would. We would definitely – and I think Sheldon later in life came to realize it could be managed perhaps. And if it’s profitable and we saw the right path, we would pursue it. I’m watching it. It’s fascinating to watch what Bill’s going through and Craig’s been through it and the people at Caesars. And it’s fun to watch and see where it goes. I believe it will be very profitable in the long term but there’s some impediments to getting there.

BREWER: I overheard you asking Bill about the sort of the backlash in Europe to sports gambling and the way that net there are now very serious limits on how people gamble. Are you guys worried that in your digital venture there could be a backlash here?

HORNBUCKLE: Well, let me back up. Backlash in many of those markets – they were gray markets – save the UK. So they weren’t regulated at all. They were kind of regulating, they used to call them. So when they are — and again in Germany is a great example – as it’s getting regulated, some of the constraints and some of the restrictions are clearly more than they were without any regulations. UK is taking a look at time on device, spending limits, all of the things that would obviously drive addictive behavior. There are, particularly because it’s an automated world, there’s a lot of things that can be put into play that protect people, that keep things in check, that help responsible gaming in a universal way. And so it is being adopted there. It’s going to be transitional to here. We’re already starting to put many of those things in play. We’ve learned from our partner Entain into our BetMGM products. And so yeah, if somebody – you always have to be mindful of it. We do not want to take anyone’s last dime full stop. It is not in our business interest to do that. And so we’re all mindful of it. On the other side of the coin, we just bought a company will hopefully close next month called LeoVegas. You know, it’s a company that’s based in Sweden. They have a great footprint, we think great technology. We are very focused on a digital growth pattern not only here domestically, obviously with BetMGM in Canada and ultimately rest of world. We see it as a – not an unlimited because nothing is unlimited, but from a platform where we stand in the scale we have, there’s only so many places to go and do what we do and keep our brands true in terms of brick and mortar. And so for us it’s a big piece of the next horizon.

BREWER: I want to talk a little bit about international too, because you all have international properties and aspirations. I’m especially interested in when going in and co-developing an integrated resort in the Middle East, again, you know, groundbreaking in so many ways. Can you talk about growth internationally and especially where we now see the geopolitical landscape changing. Where we’re seeing a lot of uncertainty about what, you know, superpowers, former superpowers, rising superpowers can and will do.

BILLINGS: So I think over the course of the past 20 years, you’ve seen both consumers and governments embrace IRs. I mean, tax revenue, tourism, great experiences, there’s all kinds of reasons to support integrated resorts. And I think you are going to continue to see that. I think it’ll be interesting to see how the industry – if we do see a proliferation – how the industry keeps pace. I mean, all of us together only have so much development capacity over the course of any given year. And it’s not like there’s 100 companies like ours. So that’ll be interesting to see. But you know, specifically with respect to the UAE, the UAE is obviously a very progressive, transformative place and they’re doing a lot of things. A lot of things socially, a lot of things from a legal and regulation perspective. And so we’re really excited about that opportunity. You know, puts our brand within 95% of consumers if they want to take an eight hour flight or less. And so it’s a meaningful extension of our brand. It’s a meaningful opportunity for our team to put their imprint on the company. It’s the first property we will do subsequent to Steve. And so it’s a very, very important event for us. And I feel great about it. 

BREWER: Talk to me a little bit about Asia and your feeling now that you sold Las Vegas ahead of this massive rebound. I know because you’ve told me on multiple occasions that you truly believe in the future of Macao and Singapore. But the Covid restrictions are still at present and an obstacle.

GOLDSTEIN: Most of Asia’s opening, I mean, Japan’s opening, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam. The market is opening. The biggest challenge there is employees and airlift getting in and out of these countries are still challenging into Singapore. But Singapore is, you know, leading the way in terms of it’s a great government, great place to operate. We’re thrilled to be there. At its peak was a $1.7 billion property. My guess is that we’ll do better than that in the future. Macao I feel even I find it funny that people question Macao’s return. Of course it’s been a hard couple of years no question. We employ 33-34,000 people. We’ve not laid anyone off, we’ve been paying them for 30 months. And it’s a tough time. You got to basically hunker down and wait for it to turn. But the idea it doesn’t turn is kind of hard to imagine it’s going to turn probably this year or next. And when it does, Macao will go back to making – you know, we made at the peak $3.5 billion EBITDA. I think we’ll make a lot more than that in the future there.

BILLINGS: I agree with Rob. The only thing that keeps me up at night about Macao is the state of my team. I mean, you know, they’ve been essentially trapped there for years.

GOLDSTEIN: Yeah. Brutal.

BILLINGS: It’s very, very difficult and I appreciate everything they do for us. It is a difficult time to be there. But if you think about the latent demand across the border, you think about the importance of Macao frankly within the Greater Bay area, we’re huge, huge bulls on Macao just like Rob.

HORNBUCKLE: Again, for the audience, I mean, Macao was seven, eight times Las Vegas in scale. I mean, okay? So it comes back half to begin with and then some and then some. I just, it’s the largest gaming market in the world bar none, and it will forever be.  

BREWER: Are there lessons that you learn from reacting to the pandemic that now you apply toward climate change or geopolitical risk, or the threat – I mean, especially with digital businesses, the threat of cyber attack?

BILLINGS: We have always really as a company tried to stay as nimble as possible and have paid dividends during that period. So we were incredibly transparent with our people. And we really empowered our folks to help us adapt, plan, and frankly, just get scrappy. There were many times when we just had to get scrappy and deal with things in the moment. And so I think that reflects within the team, whether we start talking about recession, or geopolitical events that are changing, you know, changing the demand profile – if that happens at some point. I think that that nimbleness particularly as we flexed it during Covid will pay dividends. And so I really believe we are more wired as a company, particularly here in Las Vegas and in Boston than we ever have been.  

HORNBUCKLE: And we obviously had to take a different approach. I had the unfortunate task of laying off 62,000 employees over Covid. It was painful, but it was costing us 300 million a month. And so we just didn’t have the liquidity and the ability to sustain. Now the good news is by and large, we had about half of them back in nine or 10 weeks. But it did present an opportunity because we weren’t as nimble at this scale. It’s hard to be this nibble at this scale. We did take the organizational opportunity to kind of rethink about the structure, think about the organization, what we were focused on, what we should be focused on. I think one thing that Las Vegas and all of these properties at scale are really good at is corralling around an event, championing it, getting something accomplished in terms of you know, like we’ve spent $21 million on plexiglass. It was amazing how quickly we all got into that business of making the right environment. And on and all the testing and all of the things that go into something with those kinds of logistics. These companies are just wired to do. We do the convention – the thing about convention business every day, it’s that same kind of psyche about task and orientation and go.

BILLINGS: Difficult things at scale.

HORNBUCKLE: Yeah. And so we are good at that generally. So it enabled us to get quickly into this. So we went up and down, in a matter of three months we had closed everything and we opened it all again. We were in massive Covid protocols in the context of what we’re doing, how we’re letting customers interact with us. Digitalization, you know, something we planned for 10 years to get silly check in in on a mobile device did it in three months because we had to do it. You know and to this day 25% of our people using it now. It’s a big deal. It’s a big change.

GOLDSTEIN: Necessity.

HORNBUCKLE: Yeah, necessity. The reservations 30% of our people are now making reservations online. Because guess what? They checked in digitally and so there’s been a lot of benefits and for us, particularly as an organization, we learned a lot, we did a lot. It was little bit more in command and control as a culture I want to set going forward, but we had to just get it done. And so there’s a lot of taking some that have been meaningful, but painful.   

BREWER: The other interesting thing is that we seem to be at this inflection point in the nation, the political divide, the issues over guns and abortion and racial equality. And I’m just wondering where you stand on taking a stand. Your predecessor Bill, felt very comfortable standing up and talking about his political position. Do you think that there’s a place for that as the head of a publicly traded company or what’s the risk?

HORNBUCKLE: Take any issue. Take abortion. 30% of the people are adamantly, you know, thinking that what just happened is appropriate. I don’t want to lose 30% of our customers. I think we have an obligation to our stakeholders to be very responsible, be moderate, be measured. Having said that, we employ 62,000 employees across the system who have values who care. That issue alone has impacted some of our employees in Mississippi and Ohio and other states that we operate, so we have to pay attention. Making political statements as the CEO however, I don’t know that it’s in everyone’s best interest. Putting policies in play, doing things that are appropriate for staff and ultimately the communities that I care about not making statements and eventually – Black Lives Matter I put a statement out because I thought it was important to. It got a lot of social media. Good news and not so good news. It’s not a place I think that we want to find this company.

BILLINGS: I agree with Bill. I think the – I lump it, I put it together with ESG. You know, consumers, particularly younger consumers want companies to stand for something and they want them to do it authentically. And I think that authenticity is what’s really important. So figuring out what you can do for your employees, for your communities, and to reduce your impact on the planet that you can really do. That’s what it’s about. And it’s not about marketing. It’s not performative. It’s doing. And so, I agree, I don’t think it’s about wading into politics. I think it’s about having an impact.

GOLDSTEIN: I will say that I can’t add a thing to that. Well said. I think it’s about policies, but I think I’m not sure for public companies, CEOs, that’s a role I would take on my political views shouldn’t matter. They’re not important, in my opinion. Important to me, my family but not to my shareholders. And I think it’s better we address – I think Bill and Craig’s comments about your employees and how you think about them. They’re our constituents and we want to make sure we’re responsive to them and our customers. But my political views I think are not relevant in a public forum.

BREWER: Is there a canary in the coal mine about recession coming? Jim Moran has mentioned to me that – he said, “I totally missed the onslaught of the great financial recession of 2007, 2008, 2009 because in our last quarter – fourth quarter of 2007, we had our best quarter ever lifted by the luxury properties like Bellagio.”

HORNBUCKLE: Those were good days.

GOLDSTEIN: Good days. We remember those days.

BREWER: He said, “I should have been looking at Circus Circus.” We’ve already heard some of your competitors talk about that lower demographic.

HORNBUCKLE: We have a pretty obviously broad view on this because we have properties all over the country and obviously we have every marketplace here in Las Vegas as well. We have not seen it, particularly here in Las Vegas. Now, what’s happened over the last 18 months has literally been historic and so records. But if you look about how we thought we’d be performing against how we are performing, we’re exactly where we thought we would be. We’re not naive to think that consistent gas prices, consistent increase in inflation is not going to impact our business. It hasn’t yet.

BILLINGS: I would agree with Bill. We’re in a similar situation. Now how much of that is our customer type? I don’t know. But I do think that the industry particularly here in Las Vegas is better prepared strangely, because of because of Covid, frankly, to know the levers that we need to pull to make it through whatever does happen.

BREWER: I wonder what keeps you up at night. I’m curious about it. Generally, when you look at your whole company, if there’s a thing that you see as a niggling challenge that you haven’t quite figured out.

BILLINGS: I really have two things to do in my job. Take the legacy. We talked about it earlier. Take the legacy that I’ve been handed, and make sure that I both maintain it and evolve it and grow the business. And grow the business for us often means development. So when I get up in the middle of the night, it’s thinking about those two things, which aren’t, you know, existential threats to our business, rather they are the opportunities for our business. So there is no one particular point that I would think about.

BREWER: So you sleep like a baby?

BILLINGS: Definitely not. Definitely not. But it’s not an existential threat that keeps me up at night.

HORNBUCKLE: You know, if you had asked me that question two years ago –

BILLINGS: It would be a different answer.

HORNBUCKLE: Completely different. We’re just in such a different place as a company. Our balance sheet, just how we are capitalized, what we’re doing, how we’re thinking about going forward. We’ve just done such an amazing reversal in so many respects, got fortunate in timing, and made some smart moves I think ultimately – we’re sitting on $4.5B in cash. And so we’re all operators. We’ve been doing this a long time. The day to day is not the concern. It is the things that are outside our control. So while I don’t have the same pressure they do in Macao,  we still have Macao pressure and that’s not in our control. Water at Lake Mead, we’re going to do everything we can. That’s a longer term, you know, just the general environment, what’s going to happen over time. You wake up at night and think not only about yourself and the company but your employees and the community. Those are real issues. The continue of social divide of politics and what it’s doing to our employees and customers. Not a great place. We’re just not in a great place in America in that context. 

GOLDSTEIN: I do sleep like a baby. I’m up every two hours. At our company, we went through the most dramatic couple of years. It’s hard even to even fathom. We lost Sheldon. We lost our business in Macao temporarily. We went to closure in Singapore. And of course, we sold Las Vegas. But looking back on it, we’re in a great place liquidity wise. We got lots of money in the bank. We’re very solid. The business climate in Singapore is coming back beautifully. The whole city state. Our license renewals recently we’re on the right path. Macao which was a big impediment to the future and that’s been resolved looks like to me. And so the one thing we can’t do much about is waiting for Covid resolution in China which is inevitable. And when that happens, I think our company returns to a very nice place and hopefully it’s sooner than later. But other than that, I don’t think about – the bigger issues Bill referenced, I mean, it’s painful to watch this country. I’m the oldest guy in the room probably here and I think it’s for me it’s hurtful and painful to watch this country go into such huge divide on so many issues and it’s sad and I hope we can find a way out. We’ll get through it. We’ll figure it out. But that doesn’t keep me up at night because I’m not – I can’t solve it. But it sure does make me feel sad.

BREWER: The thing about gaming is that figuring it out has been sort of the MO of the industry, of the town, of the leaders. Do you think that there’s a takeaway for other industries and other leaders about the adaptability and the flexibility in the innovation of gaming?

GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, there’s a definite lesson in terms of the same lessons any manager – they are professional managers. How do you apply into evolving environments that change all the time? It’s never easy. How do you manage your employee base? How do you manage your customer base? How do you think and stay nimble and stay focused? Life is full of challenges. The only constant is change, right? And these things change every day. Managing these behemoths, these monster buildings, is a really good lesson for any manager and I think it does translate beyond our industry.  

HORNBUCKLE: And one of the reasons it could and should is, and you know, we are the melting pot of America. We get 40 million visitors, we get everybody that comes here. We know a lot about customer behavior today. And I think we’re adept at reacting to that. And I think there’s a lot to be learned from that for others. So they’re very complex businesses. They’re interesting as hell. We’ve been doing this for a long time because we love it. Hasn’t killed us yet, but it’s trying.

GOLDSTEIN: It will, Bill.

HORNBUCKLE: No one is getting out alive.

BILLINGS: I can’t speak for gaming as a whole, obviously, but you know, part of what we do is we really steadfastly do not over corporatize. We have a very small corporate staff. We push a lot of decisions down to the asset, to the property level, to the individual line level. And now, to be fair, we’re blessed with quite a small geographic portfolio. Okay, we essentially have four assets. So I think that’s easier for us to do than some others in the industry. But you talk about evolution and you talk about change. You have to cascade that down throughout the entire business. And the more your people understand and own their respective pieces of the business, the easier that is to do. And the more you centralize it, the harder that is to do. So it’s been in ways heartening and inspiring to go through Covid and to watch what our teams were able to do and what they were able to accomplish and it really was them.

HORNBUCKLE: We have a mantra I’ve been on for about 18 months. A culture of Yes. Given scale, things happen and it’s easy to wake up one day and have policies in play and why aren’t we – why are we saying no to a customer. Well, because 15 years ago this happened. And you just wake up one day, you just have this monstrosity of a bureaucratic thing. Culture of Yes down to the line level employees, please say yes to a customer. We will protect you, we will give you the security you think you need, we will honor that decision, and ultimately we’ll make it right for both the customer and you. Big deal in these scale places because if you don’t, it just, you know, you got 4,000 rooms, you got 8,000 customers, you got 25,000 people in the building every day. Bumping into people all the time and giving and empowering employees to make those decisions is essential.

BILLINGS: No doubt.

HORNBUCKLE: Essential.

BILLINGS: No doubt.

BREWER: I just want to thank you again, like you all have very busy schedules and things to do. Thank you for making time for us, Craig, Bill, Rob.

GOLDSTEIN: Thank you.

HORNBUCKLE: Pleasure.

BILLINGS: Thank you. Appreciate it. 

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