Things are rough all over and it is changing people. I see the word “frugal” everywhere, even in the newspaper headlines. Someone being frugal is no longer looked upon as an “odd bird.” Suddenly my ideas are now in style! 

And of course we see the drastic changes the faltering economy is bringing to businesses, and casinos are no exception. We see their problems in the headlines every day. However, as gamblers who are personally involved in the day-to-day activities of many casinos, Brad and I see some of the smaller changes that don’t make the headlines, but show how severely the economic downturn is affecting them. 

I notice two distinct casino reactions. One is to cut, cut, cut. Cut employees even if customer service suffers, cut player benefits, cut machine paybacks, cut promotions. This seems to be the policy of the mega-companies and/or those casinos that are run by bean counters who may be financial whiz kids but who know nothing about the casino business and the minds of gamblers. Gamblers appreciate even the little perks, and they notice every cut that is made, even the little ones. I wonder if some of these casino executives know just how much about their casino is discussed on the Internet. Some of those “little” cuts are costing them much more in the public relations area. 

The other reaction is just the opposite: “We are going to have to try harder to get new customers and keep more of our old ones.” So those casinos are putting in better-paying video poker schedules, running more and better promotions, increasing player benefits, and training their employees to give extra-friendly customer service. These casinos know the casino business. They know that you shouldn’t look at the profit/cost figures for one week, or one month, or even one quarter. It takes time to develop casino customers that will add long-term value to your bottom line. 

Actually there is one other casino reaction – and it drives me crazy. Some casinos seem to be lurching along between those extremes I talked about above. One month they try to gain customers by “giving away the store”: a huge increase in mailed bounce-back coupons, running several overlapping extra-juicy promotions, and/or upgrading their VP paytables. Oops, they ran the numbers and someone in upper management wasn’t happy with the bleeding bottom line. So middle-management, wanting to save their jobs, slashed the bounce-back to a smaller amount that the casino had ever sent out, decided to have no bonus-point promotion that next month, and they set all their VP machines to a lower payback than they had ever been in the past. 

There is one thing that we casino customers do not like – and that is constant change. Although we realize that casinos have to tinker a bit with their marketing strategies, depending on the time of the year and other logical factors, we don’t like to see machine inventory and basic slot club policy changed every week or so. Recently many customers have stopped playing at a couple of Vegas casinos because they never know what to expect when they get there. 

I didn’t name names in this rant, but hopefully some casino executives will read it and know whether their policies are making customers happy or not! A customer will not continue to play in a casino where he/she does not feel happy or respected. Customers know when they are being jerked around!

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