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Tuesday, February 23, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Real Personal Computers
Las Vegas adult entertainment services reaching clients via World Wide Web
By John Przybys
Review-Journal
There are all sorts of Las Vegas-type things somebody with a computer and a modem can unearth on the World Wide Web.
Las Vegas hotels have Web sites. Las Vegas shows have Web sites. Southern Nevada's numerous tourist attractions have Web sites.
Now, another staple of Las Vegas life can be found on the World Wide Web: escorts and out-call services, as well as directories for all sorts of adult-oriented services.
But while the medium is different from Yellow Pages ads -- a longtime local venue for adult entertainment advertising -- and giveaway fliers, the message is much the same as it is in the noncomputer world.
At one end of the cyberspectrum are escorts who advertise their services via the Web.
Jane, a Las Vegas-based escort, said she has been finding clients online for about 1 1/2 years. Jane agreed to talk about her Web page if her real name and Web address weren't used in this story. Her page is easy enough to find, she explained, but "the only people that tend to find me are ones that are looking for me. That way, it limits the unwanted attention that I attract."
Jane said she worked for an escort agency before moving to Las Vegas in 1994, but didn't like it. "There's so much out of your control," she said. "You can't control who you're going to see, what you're going to get. (Agencies) don't care. They just want the money."
As an independent escort, "I have the right to refuse anybody, I have the right to negotiate pricing, and whatever," she said.
Jane said she learned of the Web's value as a marketing tool accidentally, when, as a computer user and America Online subscriber, she received messaged solicitations from other subscribers who read her member profile. "So, I just kind of accidentally got a few bachelor parties off of AOL without even trying."
Then, Jane said, "I was reading a Web site about strip-club reviews and there was this girl who had a Web site for escorting. I figured I should put up a Web page.
"So I put up a little Web page on my little free space of AOL. Of course I couldn't have any nudity and had to be very, very discreet."
For the past year or so, Jane has had her own Web page and domain name. "I get a lot of business" from it, she said, almost all of it from out-of-town clients planning visits to Las Vegas.
The page includes photos, a question-and-answer section and a rate list. Jane said maintaining the page is less expensive than buying an ad in the Yellow Pages and also tends to attract a better clientele than phone book ads do.
The page draws between 600 and 1,000 visitors a day, Jane said, almost all of whom are just browsing.
"It doesn't bother me, because it's not taking any of my time. What bothers me is when (people) start sending me stupid e-mail and calling me and, as soon as I answer the phone, hang up. It interrupts my day and takes up my time. I'd say 90 to 95 percent of my e-mail goes nowhere."
At the other end of the online adult entertainment spectrum are companies that publish, in effect, classified ad sections devoted to adult entertainment and services. Here, browsers can view photos of escorts, dancers and masseuses. Via a listed phone number, e-mail or a link to another Web page, they can contact the advertisers.
Andrew Maltin, a spokesman for Exotics USA -- which has a Las Vegas affiliate called Vegas Exotics -- said his company's Web site is a cyberspace version of the newspaper classified ads.
"We are strictly a publisher," he said. "People pay to advertise on our site. We are not an escort agency in any sense of what that is about."
Exotics USA's sites in 22 cities attract about 2 million visitors each month, said Maltin, adding that Las Vegas is "a big market for those types of services."
The listings offer advertisers a wider market reach than they could have alone, Maltin said. Such companies or people "come to us to advertise because we reach a market of affluent guys or guys looking for adult services."
In fact, he said, "our biggest competitors are probably the Yellow Pages or newspapers."
But, Maltin said, "it's also a lot less expensive -- probably about a quarter of the price. We don't have the same overhead -- no distribution, no printing costs."
Exotics USA's sites also contain a members-only area that includes cartoons, photo layouts and other features available for a charge to browsers of $20 a month, Maltin said. The company's goal is eventually to create an entire online magazine akin to Playboy or Penthouse.
"We're trying to create a publication," he said. "This (the directory of advertisers) just happens to be our advertising revenue."
Vegasgirls.com also publishes an online directory of adult-oriented services. Mike Kellum, marketing director for Vegasgirls.com, said the site also allows advertisers greater explicitness than would be permitted in most publications.
On the page, he said, "we can show a girl topless and can truly show anything we want."
Vegasgirls.com attracts a combination of local and out-of-town browsers, Kellum said. "A lot of people do travel around with their computers and, now, it's a very private interaction on the computer. Now you can actually go through and see all the girls that are available.
"The majority of people on the site are just browsing. A lot of people come to check out the site and see the beautiful girls. We don't mind."
In fact, the site generates "really a tiny amount of business" compared to other forms of advertising, Kellum said, "but, basically, we're giving a benefit to the people out there."
However, Kellum said, "we're not trying to promote prostitution in any way, shape or form. We're an ad agency."
Similarly, Exotics USA's Maltin said, "we have legal guidelines (advertisers) operate by, and we will not accept ads that claim to do illegal services. That's not what our business is about."
Jane, asked if she'll do more with a client than she lists on her Web page, answers, "I didn't say that."
Adult-service advertisers on the Web are bound by the same solicitation and prostitution laws that apply to adult services that advertise anywhere else, said Ron Bloxham, a chief deputy in the criminal division of the Clark County district attorney's office.
Nude dancing and the generically vague good times promised by Web advertisers are, generally speaking, legal, Bloxham said, but "we do have a county ordinance and a statute against aiding or abetting prostitution."
But, as in the non-online world, he said, "the problem is how do you show what they're really doing."
"If you look real close, I'll bet none of (the Web ads) say anything about oral sex, or any sex. It's all just playing with words -- `entertainment' and `nude encounter' and `dancing' and `fulfill your fantasies.' "
So, Bloxham said, "there's not much to do until you get caught in a direct solicitation between the officer and the suspect."
"Out-call entertainment, dancing, whatever you want to call it, is legal up to the point they come out and solicit a sexual act," said Terry Davis, section lieutenant of the Metropolitan Police Department's vice detail.
Officers do monitor escorts who advertise on the Web, Davis said. "I don't want to give away our game plan, but, obviously, we address it and have made several arrests for people who had ads not only in the phone book but on the Internet."
Davis said he's noticed the number of such ads has increased during the past year or so, and suspects most users are visitors.
Booking trips online already is common, he said, and booking an escort when they arrive "just gives them another avenue to spend their money."
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Photo illustration by Mark Antonuccio
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