Since its reopening on June 4, Wynn Las Vegas has sought to reassure potential guests about a safe stay in several ways. First, it’s promoted a Health & Disinfection Program, which contains all the Covid-19 precautions used on property as well as the contingency protocols in the event a guest falls ill. The resort is also using thermal screening at all entrances to minimize the possibility of anyone infected with Covid-19 coming on property. Further, it tests about 150 different employees at random each day; with 2,716 rooms, the resort has an employee count of more than 5,000.
In mid-September, the property did what few, if any, other hotels have done: It released the results of its employee-testing program since reopening, emphasizing that the positive rate among the 15,000 tests it has conducted was only 3.6 percent—notably below the latest Nevada average of 5.1 percent and the latest U.S. average of 4.8 percent.
The total number of positive results among Wynn Las Vegas employees between June 4 and September 15 was 497. The 10 contact tracers on the resort’s staff have determined that 98 percent of employee cases were contracted outside of the work environment. Lastly, six guests out of the 500,000 who have stayed on property since the June 4 reopening tested positive during their stay.
Matt Maddox, CEO of Wynn Resorts, said that "our goal, by implementing our Surveillance Testing Program and establishing a robust in-house contact-tracing effort, is to make Wynn Las Vegas the safest place our guests and employees can go outside of their own homes."
Among meeting planners, such a program and its resulting numbers might be reassuring. But these also reinforce the need to ask potential venues about the hand-washing, masking, and social-distancing policies for guests and employees alike. Along with surface cleaning and proper room ventilation, these are the ways to minimize the chance of Covid-19 infection during a business event.
For more advice on working with properties to ensure safe meetings, check out the cover story of MeetingsNet’s October digital issue: “The New SOP Playbook for In-Person Meetings.” The digital issue will be available on MeetingsNet.com on Thursday, October 1.
