CS @ HBS

Last weekend I participated in HBS Las Vegas Trek that was organized by HBS Travel and Hospitality Club. It was awesome!

And since a photo > 1000 words, here’s a photopost about the trek:

Wynn Tour

We had a front- and back-house tours of the Wynn, in my opinion the most gorgeous hotel in Vegas:

The Wynn’s pool from one of Wynn’s suites.

We saw two shows at the Wynn, Le Rêve (French for “The Dream”) and Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It wasn’t allowed to take photos, but this is the Le Rêve theater that we got to see during our tour:

Yes, instead of a stage there’s a huge pool of water that the actors dive into, swim, take baths… it’s a very original show.

In the back-house tour we got to see Wynn’s storage halls. If you ever eat seafood there, rest assured that it’s really fresh:

This is the beer supply for all of their restaurants, for one day:

This is their flower “plant”. Wynn’s annual flower budget – for the hotel only, not including weddings and other events – is 2 million dollars:

Venetian Tour

At the Venetian we had lunch at the employees cafeteria, and were surprised by these Italian gondoliers:

In the photo you can see them singing an Italian aria just for us…

We were also treated with this “HBS cake”:

Which was both good looking and (surprisingly) really delicious:

I think I can say everyone was thoroughly impressed at this stage, especially as we ate the cake while listening to Rob Goldstein, President and COO of the Venetian:

But for me, the highlight of the trek was, without doubt, meeting Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands (owner of the Venetian, among other properties). Mr. Adelson, world’s #6 billionaire according to Forbes and probably the richest Jew in the world, was kind enough to dedicate almost an hour of his time to us. He told us an interesting thing about being an entrepreneur: in his opinion, in order to be an entrepreneur one should keep asking oneself what is wrong or what is missing in the organization or place one is working or living in, and try to come up with solutions to these problems.

This really resonated well with me as it reminded me of some of the entrepreneurs I personally know, so it is encouraging to find affirmation to my gut feeling from someone as prominent as Mr. Adelson.

Another thing that impressed me about Mr. Adelson is that he currently dedicates a lot of his time (and personal wealth) to philanthropic causes, many of them related to Israel (for example, contribution of USD 50 million to Birthright Israel). He also donates a lot to scientific research.

Group photo of trek participants with Sheldon Adelson.

To summarize, the trip was amazing. Las Vegas is always lots of fun, and I also learned a lot about the hospitality industry in general and the Las Vegas version of it in particular.

See more photos of the trek (and larger versions of the photos in this post) here.

And on this optimistic note, GOOD LUCK to everyone who applied to HBS Round 1 last week!