Sweltering Las Vegas target of Tahoe ads

It's hard to find an untapped tourist market, but Lake Tahoe gaming and hotel officials think they've hit on one.

Las Vegas.

That's right.

Las Vegas.

Led by Heavenly Mountain Resort, the area marketed itself this winter as the ideal getaway for southern Nevadans.

Now the lake is being described as the perfect escape from Las Vegas' summer heat in a $400,000 advertising campaign launched last month by the Tahoe-Douglas Visitors Authority.

"Lake Tahoe.

So Close.

So Cool.," read the ads created by Lund & Manasse Advertising Ink.

for TDVA.

"So close, so cool and so hot in Las Vegas," said Jennifer Lund, president of the Las Vegas advertising firm.

"It's a natural sell."

The idea to target Las Vegas this summer was the brainchild of the Lake Tahoe Gaming Alliance, led by Mark Rittorno, president, Caesars Tahoe, and Don Marrandino, general manager, Harrah's Lake Tahoe and Harvey's.

"We both recently relocated from Las Vegas," said Rittorno, "The two of us were talking about that, and we came up with it."

Another factor, said Rittorno, is the rise of gaming in California.

"Indian gaming is sucking off the Sacramento, Bay Area market," he said.

"We needed to figure out other markets."

So members of the Gaming Alliance who are also TDVA members decided to work through the TDVA, which receives a portion of the occupancy tax to spend on marketing the area.

The group also approached California resorts, several of which are participating in the campaign.

The ads are running from Memorial Day to Labor Day in Las Vegas on cable television, in newspapers and on billboards near the McCarran Airport.

The TV campaign, for example, will run 200 spots a week rotated between Bravo, TBS, Spike,MTV, VH-1 and the Travel and Discovery channels.

The print ads are running in Las Vegas' two alternative newspapers, the Las Vegas Weekly and City Life.

There are also radio promotions in Las Vegas, Arizona and Southern California sponsored in conjunction with Southwest Airlines, which has 13 flights a day between Las Vegas and Reno/Tahoe International Airport that will give away Lake Tahoe vacation packages.

The ads refer people to a web site - www.coollaketahoe.com that provides links to participating resorts.

That enables the hotels and casinos to monitor the effectiveness of the ads because they'll be able to track how many visitors make reservations or request information through the campaign's web site.