Fixing Foxwoods

Foxwoods Resort Casino is a story of growth—starting as a small bingo hall in the late 1980s, through the addition of table games in 1992 and finally adding slot machines a year later. The property grew like a weed, adding separate sections of the casino, hotel towers and recently a sportsbook.

The Mashantucket Pequot tribe was able to reward its tribal owners, add top-of-the-line tribal services, create a Mashantucket Pequot cultural museum, and provide opportunities for tribal members who wanted to get ahead.

Jason Guyot was one of those tribal members. He started in the HR department at Foxwoods in 2003, and for the ensuing 20 years served in a variety of positions, mostly in hotel and resort operations. In 2020 when the pandemic hit hard, he was appointed interim president and CEO, replacing the previous CEO, who didn’t want to manage the Covid crisis.

Guyot, who is the first tribal member to hold this position, did such a good job navigating the property through the pandemic pitfalls, he got the opportunity to take the next step.

“I was honored to have the tribal council entrust me with that opportunity on interim basis,” he says. “And it went really well, so they asked me to step into the role permanently in 2021.”

Since then, Guyot hasn’t stopped. He reached a deal with the Great Wolf Lodge to add their waterpark facilities to Foxwoods that should be completed this year.

“The tribe has always wanted to create a waterpark since the early days,” he explains. “There were several plans that never came to fruition. We were talking to Great Wolf when the recession struck in 2007. We put out an RFP a few years ago and the winner was Great Wolf. So we’re building it on 14 acres with more than 500 rooms. We’ve been attracting 9 million people a year, and we expect this development to bring another million each year.”

Guyot is most proud about an idea to bring in the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and his Hell’s Kitchen to Foxwoods.

“I reached out to Gordon Ramsay North America, had some good initial conversations, and then brought the CEO of Gordon Ramsay out to the property in 2021. And they say timing is everything. It is so true. They had just opened the North American branch and Caesars had a deal with them. It was a one-off deal, and when I talked to the CEO, they were just starting to look at expanding.

“So when Gordon Ramsay himself showed up, I laid out the vision of how this Hell’s Kitchen would be an anchor for a new section of the property. I really got buy-in from him. He was excited because he had never seen Foxwoods. He didn’t know anything like this existed. And I committed to Gordon that we were going to build the best Hell’s Kitchen ever.”

To cap it off, Ramsay committed to bringing in his highly rated Hell’s Kitchen television program.

“We filmed seasons 23 and 24 in a studio here on property. It wasn’t hard to convince Fox, Gordon and ITV that we were the right destination to do it. And it went unbelievably well. It’s going to be not only a celebration of Gordon’s hit show, but really a celebration of all we have to offer here at Foxwoods.”

What’s next for Foxwoods?

“We’ll never stop expanding and changing and I’m so blessed to have a great team to help us develop the next phase,” says Guyot.