Table Gaming – a Move into the Future

A speech prepared for the Casinos and Gaming Conference, on the Development of Table Gaming Technology to prevent continuing deterioration of facility market share.
By Andrew MacDonald
Casino Manager, Conrad Jupiters, 1997

What is happening to Casino Table Games?| Will this be allowed to continue till the eventual extinction of table games? Is a Casino still a Casino if is doesn’t offer table games? | Well you don’t have to be too bright obviously to use such an arbitrary system to your advantage. The more you bring the more you get and you don’t have to play any differently. | For high rollers on table games the same is true, although we certainly don’t advertise it as “Cash Back” for this group. | With a broad based accurate table rating system offering real benefits to customers the same could occur with table game players. | That may also be extended to ensure all systems within the facility may be interfaced to enhance service delivery to our customers. The future might be something like this… | A list of the issues which might be looked at include the following | Service delivery is obviously critical in today’s market place but knowing what to deliver and implementing change quickly to meet new needs is even more important. |

For lower level table game players at the moment this does not happen. Once though we have smart systems on tables then that will change and whether you play table games or gaming machines or both you will be treated no differently.

This may to some degree even spark a resurgence in the public’s interest in table games. Certainly it will open up to Casino Marketing Departments the prospect of using direct mail and database marketing techniques on an entirely new market segment. Our player databases for gaming machines already provide us the ability to study player demographics and value. From this we can generate specific offers for certain clients. For example,
between Conrad Jupiters and Treasury Casinos we have a joint frequent user club called “Casino Rewards”. In this we have 3 levels, white, silver and gold card holders with the colour of the card relating to the player’s value.

Using our database and specifying criteria we could for example isolate all gold card holders living within a 30 minute drive and having an interest in golf and invite them to a special function in-house to meet Peter Senior and obtain an autographed golf shirt. By coding the responses we could then measure our response rate and the revenue generated by these players on the day and thus analyse the net benefit of the promotion.