Taming the Marketing Beast
In the world of hospitality and tourism, casinos are unique animals. They are far often larger than traditional hotels, offering more rooms, restaurants and amenities than most resorts or convention hotels. Yet despite their shear size, what differentiates casinos most is their copious consumption of marketing dollars. And while some casinos are efficient users of marketing dollars, others act more like large beasts, with a ravenous and unending appetite.
A casino that is a marketing beast is characterized, first and foremost by a never ending need to spend money in order to drive traffic through its doors, ostensibly to keep the slot handle up. Typically, a marketing beast is a casino in which there is a marketing promotion or program in effect virtually every day of the year. Bus marketing programs, monthly large drawing drum promotions, daily tournaments, midweek promotions, an endless parade of merchandise giveaways, and of course, copious amounts of direct mail offers are used to feed the beast. Often these promotions are layered on top of each other with customers coming in and redeeming multiple offers on the same visit. It is as if management is afraid that, without these marketing programs, the flow of business will immediately stop and the beast will collapse. So, to keep the beast alive, money is spent. Empirically, a beast can be defined as a casino that spends in excess of 25% of its revenue on marketing and
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