This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batchel. I welcome my good colleague Jeff Bliss. Jeff Bliss is Pacific Watch. We go right to the Vegas report. Jeff has been developing for some months now the theme of nickel and diming, damaging the economy of the strip in Las Vegas. This is a wholly admirable city remaking itself and its neighborhood, except, Jeff, a very

good evening to you.

You sent me a disturbing video of a young woman on expense account at you tell me the

fountain blow.

And she was showing us on video what she ordered for room service. She had an omelet, fairly modest, by itself on a plate,

a vegetable selection on a side dish, and a glass of green juice. And the bill was over $100.

I think it was $100 in some change. She was shocked and wondered how she would expense it

because she would be accused by her company of extravagance. But you've told me that's not

extravagant. That's nickel and diming. Do I say that correctly? Good evening to you.

Good evening, John. You do say it correctly, that things have changed in Vegas.

You know, it was not unusual when I would travel to New York City, to you folks, on business and stay at a hotel, to get hit with huge room service charges.

And people would say, you know, your company would say, yeah, that's New York.

We expect it.

But nobody ever expected that in Vegas. Vegas was the place of, you know, a $5 steak breakfast and

$2.99 shrimp cocktails and either getting free drinks in the casino or a good cocktail for a

couple bucks. But nowadays, you're going to pay, like they say, over 100 bucks for a simple breakfast in your room

at the font blue or you know 48 bucks for a martini in one of the other hotels the nickel

and dimey has gone on and on plus resort fees and and other other expenses they add on parking

and people have been getting tired of that over the past few

years as Vegas has gone from being what they used to say, a well-run mob town to one that's run

by the corporations. And the corporations are looking at the profit and loss lines there. And they're

saying, how can we do this? Well, we can extract that money from our guests by charging more for

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