Las Vegans know their home is a special place because when you go to some other place and tell people where you’re from, their eyes light up. Wow! Really? What’s it like to live in Las Vegas?
Now imagine if you also happen to work at Bellagio, now and forever one of the most recognizable pieces of the Las Vegas Strip. The wow increases exponentially. And what if your job was to look after those famous fountains? They might not even believe you.
“When I was an engineer and told people I would have to be a diver in the fountains, they always say, ‘What?!’ I’d have to explain how we’d do maintenance, dive down and fix this or that, and sometimes show them videos,” says Victoria Rios, currently facilities manager at Bellagio. “They can’t believe that’s happening during the day under the water, saying ‘What a cool job!’ And it is. Every day is different here.”
Rios has spent thousands of different days at the iconic resort. She’s one of approximately 1,300 Day 1 employees at Bellagio, which is celebrating 25 years this month. Those fountains, the Conservatory & Botanical Gardens, Cirque du Soleil’s epic O, the fancy restaurants, the glass blossoms by Dale Chihuly hanging over the lobby—all these things seem like they’ve always existed, paragons of the universe of Vegas, but they first arrived on October 15, 1998.
Rios, a born-and-raised native, has been part of the Bellagio team since July 1998, transferring from Treasure Island, which was also opened by Steve Wynn. “We always talk about these [anniversaries] when they come around, all the different events we’ve had at Bellagio from commercials to stuff on the lake to films being made here,” she says. “I just happened to be flipping channels and saw Ocean’s Eleven, and I realized Bellagio looked totally different from the day we first opened up to now.”
In her current role, Rios is in charge of front features, including the fountains, the Conservatory and its seasonal changes, and the hotel’s key shop as well. She says she never gets tired of watching the fountains and she has too many “favorite memories” from those special Bellagio moments to pick just one, but the best part is spending all those days and years with her co-workers.
“Seeing them every day, and just the opportunities I’ve had here,” that’s what stands out, Rios says. “Every year has been a learning lesson ... and we learn so much from each other.”
Bellagio has around 6,000 team members, so the fact that 1,300 of them have been there from the start begins to tell the story of how the luxury resort has maintained its reputation and following. The staff will be celebrated this month with a party that will last 24 hours so every team member can participate, according to Ann Hoff, president of Bellagio and Park MGM.
“There is great camaraderie with their co-workers and they also have relationships with our guests, who come back time and time again to see these employees,” says Hoff, who has been with Bellagio’s current parent company, MGM Resorts, for 33 years. “They have personal relationships from creating memorable, meaningful moments for our guests. Our employees truly are the stars of the show and the reason we have such loyalty at Bellagio with consumers.”
Hospitality is and always has been the name of the game in Las Vegas, but Bellagio contains undeniable magic. In addition to those awe-inspiring attractions, it revolutionized cuisine on the Strip with the first real portfolio of celebrity chef fine-dining restaurants, and three of those original chefs (Julian Serrano, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Michael Mina) are still in the mix. So is the legendary New York transplant Le Cirque.
“It just delivers,” Hoff says. “Everyone has their moments they think about. Cirque wasn’t introduced first at Bellagio. There were other [shows] before O, but O is so much more than entertainment. It is truly one of the most beautiful and the most successful theatrical experience ever created, and there are still sold-out audiences after all these years.”
Bellagio is a part of global pop culture, and there aren’t many casinos or hotels on the Strip or anywhere else that can make that claim. It simply doesn’t seem like Las Vegas could exist as we know it without Bellagio, even as the city has evolved into something much greater than the rest of the world’s limited perception.
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