It’s a windy day in the Biggest Little City while reporter Sean Sear, scrambling down the streets of downtown Reno, starts to make his way into the one and only Circus Circus casino hoping to have a vision full of nothing but casino goers. Little did Sean know how truly dreary this day was about to get.
The state of Nevada is very familiar with tourists and welcoming in people from all over the world, look at Las Vegas for example. While Reno is a smaller city, there is still a large population of tourists that come to Reno. The best part (to some) about Nevada is the casinos and we wanted to find out what casinos are popular these days.
A very noticeable thing from the information we gathered was that people will not often change the casinos they stay at once they have liked their original experience there. As many of us may know, not many people are fond of change and like to be comfortable in their routines and casinos can be included in that.
There’s also a major difference between someone that is traveling to Reno for the first time versus someone that has been in Reno for a long time and has been able to experience and stay at a lot of the hotels/casinos here. Whether it is local discounts or comfortability, there will always be something that catches the eye of one of the travelers that keeps them coming back.
Sonya, who is a worker at Circus Circus and a local to Reno, said that she prefers Peppermill out of all the options here. “I just like their style and it’s very nice there, it’s bigger and better than most hotels here in Reno,” she shared.
A major part of the appeal for Sonya was the gambling aspect at Peppermill as she said she used to spend most of her time there and was a big gambler before she started to try to save money. Peppermill appeals to locals as there is a 20% discount for most things at the hotel.
On the contrary, a tourist from Florida named Sheri won a trip to Reno and spent the last five days living the hotel life and learning about some of what Reno had to offer.
Her interest wasn’t gambling as much as a nice place to stay and she proclaimed that “the Silver Legacy had some live music and action on the weekends… so it had something to do besides just gambling.”
Sheri wasn’t too happy with how her gambling went during her stay.
“I’m not coming back to Reno. It was a long flight and honestly I had zero luck at any of the casinos,” she said, This can be mentally, and financially, taxing to lose all of the “fun money” you had planned for the trip and can dampen your mood on going back to gamble again.
What side of the coin are you on? Do you prefer to stay at a hotel that offers local discounts and ensures that they want locals back or would you prefer to stay at a hotel that might not have better local discounts but is more lively during the weekends and offers more fun for your weekend stay?
Admittedly, we just got a small taste and there’s so much more in casino land that can be experienced here, but as many other locals without any intense attraction to gambling it’s also easy to just pass them by while going elsewhere, and wonder what happens inside.