Hotel

Pampering, Purchasing, and Partying: More opportunity for increased revenue

Posted on September 16, 2017

Providing customers with experiences that exceed their expectations significantly improves the operator’s ability to attract and retain customers.

These experiences can be created in a casino resort environment in spa, retail, nightlife and entertainment in both destination and regional gaming markets. Customers who provide feedback
tend to be inclined to offer both positive and constructive feedback that focuses much on their non-gaming experiences.

Incorporating non-gaming amenities as a complement to the gaming experience provides customers a more complete and hospitality-driven visit. These concepts are not new. Carefully planned and well-executed non-gaming amenities provide operators with significant opportunities to increase revenue, profit, and ultimately, customer loyalty.

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Expanding Hospitality

Posted on August 16, 2017

In this, our second in a series of discussions about the role of non-gaming amenities in both destination and regional gaming markets, we focus on the extraordinary and ongoing evolution of hotels, and how to assess, strategize and implement change.

The “lens” we use is comprised of five attributes that, when integrated, provide operators with a framework to create a comprehensive strategy for developing a new hotel or rebranding and refurbishing an existing one: the strategic assessment lens. This approach has helped several operators create new development and rebranding strategies for successful restaurants, bars, nightlife, entertainment and retail venues, casinos and hotels.

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Changing the Face of the Industry

Posted on July 25, 2017

In this, our second in a series of discussions about the role of non-gaming amenities in both destination and regional gaming markets, we focus on the extraordinary and ongoing evolution of hotels, and how to assess, strategize and implement change.

The “lens” we use is comprised of five attributes that, when integrated, provide operators with a framework to create a comprehensive strategy for developing a new hotel or rebranding and refurbishing an existing one: the strategic assessment lens. This approach has helped several operators create new development and rebranding strategies for successful restaurants, bars, nightlife, entertainment and retail venues, casinos and hotels.

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The Challenges of Developing a Casino Resort

Posted on November 16, 2006

Over the past fifteen years the Indian casino industry has evolved and so too have the individual properties that make up this industry. Many of these casinos have evolved from simple gaming operations housed in temporary structures to regional gaming entertainment centers, and some have succeeded in evolving into lavish full-scale resorts. While the evolution of a casino into a regional gaming entertainment center is often a natural and progressive form of casino development, the creation of a true casino resort is often a difficult, expensive and risky process. There is, in fact, a wealth of problems facing any casino operator that attempts to make the transition from a local oriented casino to a full-scale casino resort.

When conducting a market assessment for an expansion of a casino into a resort, consultants examine a number of variables including 1) the location of the proposed resort and
its ability to support this kind of development, 2) the expected demand for a resort from primary feeder markets, 3) the proposed quality level of the resort, 4) the kinds of amenities
that will support the resort experience, 5) the size of the proposed resort and the size of its related amenities, 6) the relative strength of the competition and 7) the ability of casino
management to effectively manage a full-scale resort operation. Misreading any of these variables can doom the project.

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The Changing Role of the Casino Hotel

Posted on October 16, 2006

A hotel addition to a casino has long been recognized as an important amenity for any local casino that seeks to evolve into a regional gaming and entertainment destination. A hotel allows a casino to be more than just a daytrip destination. A well designed and well maintained hotel that is effectively marketed can generate a substantial amount of profit as a stand-alone revenue center. Also, the hotel allows the casino to generate incremental revenue through casino marketing programs.

Traditionally, hotels were developed at casinos as standalone profit centers where a portion of room sales (normally 20%-30%) were allocated towards casino marketing and the remainder sold to transient, group and commercial segments. However, this business model is changing. Casino operators have begun to realize that hotel rooms can be used to overcome locational disadvantages and drive greater revenues into the casino. The trend is to allocate a far greater percentage of hotel rooms to casino marketing, which are then offered to various segments of the database through demand stimulation programs.

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Designing the Right Amenity Mix

Posted on May 16, 2006

When leadership decides to commit to an expansion of its gaming facility or a wholesale replacement of its casino, the first step is to determine the proper size of the proposed gaming operation. This exercise involves examining the current utilization of the existing facility, the size of the primary and secondary markets that the casino will serve and the gaming behavior of those markets. While not a precise science, determining the right number of gaming devices, table game positions and casino square footage is based on proven mathematical models. Although
complex, these models can accurately determine the proper sizing of a casino.

The next step is to determine the appropriate mix of nongaming amenities that will support the gaming operation in order to maximize gaming revenue. Non gaming amenities are most often comprised of restaurants, hotel rooms, meeting and banquet facilities, entertainment venues, retail outlets and leisure/recreation operations such as golf courses, movie theatres, nightclubs, bowling centers, arcades and child care facilities. While determining the right amount of hotel rooms and banquet/meeting facilities is primarily an empirical exercise, identifying those other amenities that will maximize gaming revenue and best meet the needs of the market requires far more investigation.

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Common Mistakes in Marketing Research

Posted on September 16, 2004

A locals’ oriented casino-hotel located in a resort community recently completed a major expansion to better serve tourists visiting the city. After extensive market research, the casino’s parent company had made the determination that the property was highly desired by tourists and that an expansion of its hotel and entertainment offerings was critical if it was to grow its revenue. After investing over $50 million, the new resort expansion opened. While locals were impressed with the new property and liked its richly appointed amenities, tourists did not show up in any great numbers. Revenues remained essentially flat and EBITDA plunged as operating expenses associated with these new amenities increased.

In the post-opening period a team of executives tried to understand what went wrong. They began a marketing forensics exercise in which they reviewed all the data that was used to bring the company to the decision to expand into the tourism segment. This is what they uncovered.

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Cost-Effectiveness of Substance Abuse Treatment in Casino Hotels

Posted on February 16, 1992

One of today’s business realities is the prevalence of employee substance abuse – a particularly acute problem for the hospitality industry. Merely getting rid of substance-abusing employees is, at best, a cosmetic solution. Faced with labor shortages, growing “wrongful termination” litigation, and legislative mandates that promote a drug-free workplace and prohibit employee discrimination of recovering substance abusers, employers are investing in employee-assistance programs (EAPs) that provide substance-abuse treatment and permit the employer to retain an otherwise productive employee. Like any investment, a cost-benefit analysis such as that described in this article can provide a framework for evaluating the relative advantages of various types of EAPs.

Among the more tangible benefits of treating substance abusing employees is reduced turnover and absenteeism: expensive problems that otherwise might go unchecked. As a way of presenting our cost-benefit analysis, we compare the EAPs at two casino hotels which have quite different substance-abuse programs: the Mirage, in Las Vegas, and Merv Griffin’s Resorts International Hotel-Casino, in Atlantic City. In this article, we focus only on the programs’ effects on absenteeism and turnover, recognizing full well that there are many other benefits, both tangible and intangible, that accrue when employee substance-abuse problems are addressed by managers.

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