Opening night is the easy part.

Opening night is the easy part.

Élia Beach Club opened at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas on June 10, 2021 — Mykonos on the strip, Las Vegas' only real sand beach, designed by Francois Frossard. ITM was part of the operating team. We've told the opening-day story elsewhere. This one is about the two years after, because that's where the actual job is.

A grand opening is one great night that a hundred people work toward. A season is every weekend after that, when the press has moved on and the room still has to be full. deadmau5 played our opening in June and came back to close the season on October 24. SOFI TUKKER was our resident. The bill through those months read like a house-music record store: Lane 8, Loco Dice, Sigala, TroyBoi, SNBRN, Morgan Page, Ben Böhmer, Sultan & Shepard, Sam Blacky, Klingande, Goldfish, Chris Malinchak, Hook & Sling, Coast Club. That's not a lineup. That's a calendar, and somebody has to build it and defend it every single week.

The room had a second life on Saturday mornings. "The Reset" — free beachfront yoga and meditation at 9:30, hosted by Arianny Celeste, led by Tony Cress, Leah O'Connor and Damon Damato, running every Saturday through Halloween. Show up, breathe, stay for the day on us. Las Vegas Weekly named Élia the Best New Oasis. We'll take that one — it wasn't for the biggest night, it was for what the place felt like on a regular day.

Then EDC Week, October 22–24, 2021 — the first one since 2019, and a real test of whether a first-year venue could hold weight against the whole city. We ran a Dreamstate night with Cosmic Gate and Markus Schulz, Above & Beyond's Anjunafamily Reunion Tour on Saturday, and deadmau5 closing the season on Sunday. Summer 2022 brought Snoop Dogg, and the weekends kept selling out into a second year.

None of that was one person, and it certainly wasn't one company. Élia was Mio's creation — he brought Joia Beach and the vision, ITM was part of the operating team, and it lived inside JC Hospitality and Richard Branson's Virgin family, run daily by a staff who did the part nobody writes articles about. We played our part on a world-class team and we're winning. That's the honest version.

Opening a room gets you a headline. Programming it for two years gets you a business. We know which one we're in.