[Music] hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of the jaya huddle sponsored by ainsworth a leading supply of gaming machines software and related equipment today we're speaking to jim allen ceo of seminole gaming and chairman of hard rock international two-time winners at this year's global gaming awards las vegas hi jim how are you i'm doing well how about yourself yeah i'm very well thanks uh thanks for joining us our pleasure um so the first question i wanted to ask you um obviously we're in november now as we're near the end at the end of 2020 such a such a different year such a tumultuous year um how do you reflect on on a challenging year for the industry well i think your adjectives are certainly appropriate i mean obviously covet you know 100-year event certainly changed i think the way all of us look at business in any sector certainly when we think about the hotel casino and most importantly the restaurant business you know probably you know three of the hardest hit categories uh certainly airlines and cruise ships but um been a real challenge but the good news is um our business is coming back from the casino side the restaurants you know still extremely challenged but we continue to move forward because most importantly it's the safety of our guests and employees and members of the seminole job [Music] how do you look ahead to prospects of of 2021 given as you say some uplifting in gaming levels after some pent-up demand but also possibly with with the recent vaccine news i know it's it's a little speculative at this point but you know that's obviously positive well i think one of the the tremendous assets of the hard rock brand is its global footprint you know being in 76 countries around the world so until we see the airline industry tourism and travel you know start to rebound in a healthy way i think we need to be very cautious i think in markets say like here in south florida we're on base here today where it's a little bit more of a regional market and obviously a state like florida having 21 million people i think that business model can remain you know moving in a proper direction of one trying to be somewhat optimistic but certainly destination locations say like you know times square where we're still closed literally as of today because candidly you know the hotels are virtually empty there's not much airlift the theater district is closed until further notice we are extremely concerned about the uh about that business on a long term basis yeah you mentioned kind of a caution there how do you kind of exercise caution when you're sort of planning day to day and when it comes to short-term and medium-term planning i think all the businesses now have certainly um and you know some operators probably better than others but looking at margins looking at fixed costs such as labor you know rents trying to work with our landlords you know trying to recognize it's a two-way street certainly looking at all those um overhead challenges and how can we be smarter utilizing technology certainly you know in the cafe division you know things like uber and grubhub and you know delivery and you know all those things are some of the tools that we're trying to utilize and we uh we recently spoke at the the global gaming awards where you won the the land-based operator of the year award and the property of the year award with the guitar hotel in florida and obviously that that's quite a a much more positive note than you know any conversation we can have about covet and coronavirus uh how on the on the guitar hotel note how helpful are you of a strong effort for that property given of course there are challenges yeah you know certainly covet has hit florida like all the other states i guess the good news is from a business perspective um the government governor desantis is you know still trying to keep an open mindset to allow businesses to stay open with not well there are restrictions but certainly not tremendous restrictions there certainly were somebody's lifted most of those and can't believe the hotel is meeting or actually exceeding our expectations from a profitability standpoint but traffic counts are certainly down from where we had hoped you know just based upon foot traffic and tourism you know here into the state of florida and specifically south florida and when it comes to your other properties in 2021 kind of i know it depends on on region and state but what were your general hopes for some of your main properties i think 2021 is a year of um caution uh but we do think there are some bright spots starting to develop but i think we're certainly not optimistic we do believe that 2022 has some some real upside as you mentioned assuming the vaccine has proper distribution vaccines i should say obviously we now have two um but you know proper distribution what percentage of the population is going to take the vaccine what happens with the perception from the media with covet you know we we certainly think there's a lot of those things need to fall into place but if they do unfortunately um for others you know somewhat good for us you know a lot of restaurants are closing and closing permanently in many cases you know we hear numbers of 30 40 50 60 of the restaurants that we're open pre-covet will not be in existence by the commencement of 2022. we know we will close permanently some of our locations but the majority of them will be open therefore maybe we can um reap some of the benefits of less competition in certain marketplaces sure and and my final question to you uh based on everything you've just said there um have you got any kind of new big new developments in the pipeline and if not is that really the result of kind of the current climate at the moment you know interesting enough that's the one division that is extremely busy there has been zero slowdown with deals in the hotel area and zero slowdown with our casino and destination resorts i will tell you that we're not looking to open any new hard rock cafes domestically company owned stores but certainly on a global basis where we would normally open say 15 to 20 25 um being in a high year on an annual basis and those numbers have probably come down more like 10 to 15. um well jim thank you very much for your time best of luck obviously during these these challenging times to everyone at the company and thank you for your answer well we certainly thank you for having an interest in the hard rock brand to our viewers thanks for watching for the latest developments in the us market be sure to head to gamingamerica.com where we've just released the november december edition of gaming america [Music] magazine [Music] you