Tioga Downs Casino in Nichols, New York is gearing up for the November opening of its hotel portion. The gambling venue was the last one to receive a license from the New York State Gaming Commission and the first to open doors.
Tioga Downs Casino, formerly only a racetrack, welcomed its first casino customers in December 2016. Two more casinos have opened doors in Upstate New York since then – del Lago Resort & Casino in Waterloo and Rivers Casino & Resort in Schenectady. Both resorts launched their hotel parts in July, leaving Tioga Downs the only commercial casino in the region without an operational accommodation facility.
The Tioga Downs hotel will feature 161 rooms. Aside from them, the accommodation portion of the complex will also feature three swimming pools, both indoor and outdoors ones, a spa, a venue for banquets and receptions, and a fitness. New food and beverage options will also be unveiled in November.
The opening of the hotel portion will be followed by the launch of a conference center just a month later.
Prior to its expansion, Tioga Downs, which is owned by New York real estate developer and gambling boss Jeff Gural, was a harness racetrack. It also featured 800 video lottery terminals, known to be gaming machines that share features with traditional slots but are regulated under a different category. In 2015, it was given the green light by New York State gambling regulators to add actual slot machines and table games and become one of four commercial hotel and casino resorts planned to launch operations in Upstate New York.
As mentioned above, three of the gambling venues, Tioga Downs Casino included, have already opened doors. The fourth property – Resorts World Catskills is slated to hold a March 2018 opening ceremony.
Concerns about New York’s Commercial Casino Market
The New York State Gaming Commission granted four gaming licenses for Upstate New York, despite concerns that four gambling venues could oversaturate the local market and could fail to produce new revenue instead of cannibalizing revenue from one another and from existing tribal casinos around the state.
The three new casinos have previously predicted that they would collectively generate the amount of $558 million during their first year of operation. However, figures from the New York State Gaming Commission, which issues information about the venues’ performance on a weekly basis, show that the casinos have generated a total of $247 million during the nine months ended September 30. In other words, they have just three months to collect more than $300 million in revenue and to meet their original forecast.
New York expanded its casino market, adding commercial operations to the existing tribal ones at a time when surrounding states are generally doing the same. In other words, the new commercial gambling venues are operating in a highly competitive environment and are facing the challenging task to win casino clientèle over tribal casinos with years of experience in the field as well as over casinos from neighboring states.
