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Rio Las Vegas Partners With Hyatt in Rebranding, Renovation Project

  • One hotel tower will be a Hyatt Regency, the other a Hyatt brand to be named later
  • The overall property will keep the Rio name
  • The property’s public areas and hotel rooms will be renovated
  • Neither the Rio’s owner nor the Hyatt has commented on the future of the WSOP
  • The Rio’s ample convention space makes it perfect for the World Series of Poker
Dan Katz

Dan Katz graduated with a BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Emory University. He clearly uses neither of those degrees now, having been writing about the gambling industry (specializing in poker) since 2005. Prior to that, he was an IT and management consultant. He is an avid gamer, primarily on PC, and enjoys collecting retro video games and consoles; finding room to set them all up is his current challenge. Dan lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and two children. You can get in touch with Dan at [email protected].

Rio Las Vegas at sunset
Dreamscape Companies LLC has partnered with Hyatt Hotels to renovate the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and rebrand its hotel towers with the Hyatt Name. [Image: Shutterstock.com]

Rio name will remain

The owner of the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is rebranding the property and embarking on an ambitious renovation project. Dreamscape Companies LLC announced on Thursday that it is partnering with Hyatt Hotels Corp. on the multiphase endeavor for the off-Strip casino.

Hyatt will rebrand the property’s two hotel towers to reflect the company name. Specifically, one tower will become a Hyatt Regency with 1,501 rooms. The other will be either rebranded or at least “affiliated” with a different Hyatt brand, most of which still use the name “Hyatt” in some form.

The name of the property as a whole, however, will not change.

We will maintain the iconic Rio name.”

“We will maintain the iconic Rio name,” a spokesperson for Dreamscape founder and CEO Eric Birnbaum said.

In addition to the hotel towers, the renovations will include virtually every key public space, including the gaming floor, restaurants, retail shops, pools, and spa and fitness centers.

Will the WSOP stay at the Rio?

Though the Rio name doesn’t have the instant recognition that, say, Caesars Palace, Bellagio, and MGM Grand do, the news is of particular interest to gamblers because the Rio is the home of the World Series of Poker. Caesars, which operates the property, owns the WSOP and its assets.

From 1970 until 2005, the WSOP was held at the legendary Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas. When the poker boom hit and the Series’ attendance exploded, Caesars (then Harrah’s) moved the WSOP to the Rio. In 2005, the final two days of the Main Event were still held at Binion’s, but starting in 2006, the Rio became home to the WSOP in its entirety.

The question in the minds of poker players now is what will happen to the World Series of Poker. It is not going away, but rumors have swirled for the better part of a decade that it would move to a different location at some point.

After Caesars sold the Rio to Dreamscape in 2019 for $516.3m, the two companies agreed that Caesars would continue to operate the property for two years, paying $45m in rent per year, with a $7m third year option. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they pushed the end of the lease term to December 15, 2023. If Dreamscape takes over completely at that point, it is very possible that the WSOP will have to find a new venue.

Convenient spot off the Strip

The Rio opened on January 15, 1990 as the first all-suite resort in the Las Vegas area. It is named after Rio de Janeiro and has a general Brazilian/South American interior theme. The hotel’s blue and red glass towers make it an easy property to locate off of Flamingo Road, just west of the Strip.

In 1999, Marnell Corrao Associates sold the Rio to Caesars Entertainment (again, Harrah’s at the time) for $888m. Caesars parted with the Rio in December 2019 as part of the trend of gambling companies shedding their real estate holdings and focusing strictly on operations.

A major reason the World Series of Poker moved to the Rio, and likely the primary reason, is because the property has extensive convention space. As the WSOP has grown, it has spread across multiple, cavernous convention halls. The Penn & Teller Theater serves has home to the WSOP Main Event final table.

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