In a deal reached last November. Colony agreed to pump $15 million into it to keep it afloat. In ret

But a new identity for The Atlantic Club Casino Hotel (nee ACH, aka The Atlantic City Hilton) is the easy part: The struggling casino, which came perilously close to closing last year, is going for the bottom of the market, with $19 hotel rooms, 25-cent gambling chips and a discount-every-day mentality.
It's literally at the opposite end of the Atlantic City universe from Revel, the $2.4 billion casino opening next month at the other end of the Boardwalk, and whose initial success could make it even harder for The Atlantic Club to survive.
Yet going down-market was the only option The Atlantic Club had in a market where the other two alternatives online booking of corporate travel were either impossible (compete online booking of corporate travel head-to-head with newer luxury resorts online booking of corporate travel like the Borgata Hotel Casino Spa and the soon-to-open Revel), or disastrous (close the doors, lay off nearly 1,900 people and take a multi-million-dollar loss.)
online booking of corporate travel "We knew we were going to have to differentiate ourselves in some way," Michael Frawley, the casino's chief operating officer, told The Associated Press. "We had to have a very clear definition of what our position was in this market. Before 2008, just being a casino was enough. online booking of corporate travel Now, we have to make a stand on who we want to be."
And that, Frawley said, is the casino "for the rest of us." The Atlantic Club is staking online booking of corporate travel its very survival on winning the loyalty and regular business of people who want to have fun without spending a lot of money.
"People still want to go out and people still want to have a good time, but price point becomes a key consideration," he said. "We knew that competing in the high-limit tables games is for somebody else. We needed another reason for people to come, and that's letting them play without breaking the bank."
It recently got permission from New Jersey casino regulators to use 25-cent and 50-cent gambling chips the lowest denominations ever offered in Atlantic City. On Friday, the casino's six restaurants will slash their prices by 40 to 50 percent. Beer will go for $2 ($3 for imports), and a martini AND a hamburger together will cost $10 during the two happy hours they have each day.
This is not a temporary promotion; this is what The Atlantic Club will be every day of the week. And that puts enormous pressure on management to drive more customers through the doors. The casino simply cannot survive without significantly increasing its customer base, something Frawley acknowledges.
"We think our customers are worth it," Frawley said. "Quite honestly, it's a cost of doing business now for us. We had heard from a lot of our customers that the one thing they really didn't like was paying to park, and if you're going to be a value-priced casino, you have to walk the walk."
The casino very nearly shut down last year. It had been for sale for two years, but could not land a buyer. Its owners, Los Angeles hedge fund Colony Capital LLC, stopped paying its mortgage in 2009 because the money simply wasn't there.
In a deal reached last November. Colony agreed to pump $15 million into it to keep it afloat. In return, lenders foreclosed online booking of corporate travel on and took ownership of two casinos in Mississippi that Colony owned, Bally's Tunica and Resorts Tunica, and wiped out the mortgage online booking of corporate travel debt for what was then called ACH.
The deal also gave the casino an additional infusion of $9.3 million in cash from insurance proceeds from an August 2009 flooding claim. All told, it gave Colony $24.3 million in new funds to invest in the casino online booking of corporate travel and help keep it running.
It slashed expenses, online booking of corporate travel including laying off 150 employees the day after the rescue plan was approved by New Jersey casino regulators, giving it some more breathing room. Frawley said projections call for The Atlantic Club to break even by the fourth quarter of this year, and to turn a modest profit in 2013.
For the first two months of this year, The Atlantic Club has taken in just under $16.2 million. That's the worst total among Atlantic City's 11 casinos, and is down nearly 25 percent from the same period a year ago.
But Frawley said the casino is starting to see modest increases in food and beverage revenue and in hotel occupancy in recent weeks an encouraging sign during one of the deadest portions of the calendar.
online booking of corporate travel The casino is reducing the amount of slot machines from about 1,850 to 1,500, but it's installing the newest brands and titles something that hasn't been done on a large scale for many years, Frawley said.