Shoshone-Bannock Casino Hotel holds grand opening

On February 13, the Shoshone-Bannock Casino Hotel held a ribbon cutting with all of the local chambers, tribe members and anyone that played a part in building the new casino. And on Saturday, the casino held its grand opening.

“Today’s activities is to celebrate with our employees, our guests, everybody that comes out, our higher-end players, we just want to show them a really good time,” promotions and events coordinator Destiney Tinno explained.

Tinno has been involved in the planning of the new casino for years and is excited to see all the hard work finally come to fruition.

“The last two years has been a long time waiting,” she said. “We’ve had our plans in place and meeting after meeting trying to get everything ready to go. We’ve always had a plan of what we wanted to do, it was just executing the dates.”

Yesterday’s festivities included pictures with showgirls, performances by Rat Pack and Elvis impersonators and a chance for 30 lucky people to win a chance at a million dollars.

Tinno has been with the casino for 26 years and said that the new facility has been the best part of it all.

“I’ve worked in various departments over the years and I’ve seen everything change. And it’s been very exciting and finally having the casino-hotel has been the highlight,” Tinno explained.

But some changes are hard to get used to, like a new name.

“It is, because I’ve been saying it over and over for the last 26 years and to have to change to something new,” she said. “It’s a little bit trickier but I will learn how to say our new properties names.”

With the casino up and running, Tinno is just looking forward to continued expansion.

“We are gonna be taking off, we’re not gonna slow down. Every time we think it’s gonna slow down it just picks up and we’re just increasing and finding better ways to accommodate our guests and just watching things grow,” Tinno said. “That’s the big goal is to keep moving forward on with all of our other projects.”