Casino Host Goals

 admin

Supports the Director of Player Development’s efforts to aggressively drive Host activity to attain individual revenue goals and objectives. Also increases the growth of gaming revenues through development of his/her personal guest base. Updates guest history for future visits. Ensures the protection of guest’s rewards and credit lines. What Are Casino Hosts? Many casinos, especially the larger ones, employ a team of casino hosts whose sole job is to make players happy and assist them in getting the most out of their experience with the casino, within reason, and sometimes even beyond reason depending on the value of the player.

A host I know lost his job because he failed to meet his goals in his first quarter at a new property. Sadly, he says he was never told that he had only one quarter to prove that he could achieve goals. Not only that, he added that no one gave him a progress update during that first quarter. Not once. Can you believe it? It’s bad enough to feel as though you’ve failed because you missed a target, but imagine losing your job due to your very first failure to achieve your goals.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you are an Ace Casino Host. You do the work you have been asked to do: you return calls, host player events, talk to people, resolve issues, make reservations, answer questions and represent your property like a pro…but how are you doing?

Can you confidently say, at any point in any day, how you are tracking to achieve the goals you’ve been working toward? Do you have to rely on a gut feeling that you’re generating enough revenue to hit your theoretical target? Do you have a way to look it up or calculate it? Are you supposed to bring back folks who haven’t visited lately? How about new club sign-ups or high-worth recent new members? Have you signed up or brought back in enough players to reach the goal? Can you check?

Casino host goals list

During your team meetings, are you asked how you’re doing? Does someone tell you? Do you write it down, track your activity, and see the ebb and flow of your guest’s visits and play history? If someone asked you to demonstrate your contribution to the company’s goals, could you do it? Do you know which of your daily tasks are the most important or upon which ones you should focus today to remain on course to achieve your goals and objectives?

In order to understand how to reach your destination, you must first be aware of where you are and how best to navigate your way. Then, you can know what obstacles are in your path, use the right strategies to circumvent them, and make steady progress to the finish line. Do you have these essential touchpoints? If not, how do you keep yourself on target?

In order to have a productive day, an Ace Casino Host needs to understand which players should be his priority contacts. To do his job most effectively, that host needs context for each contact. You handle each player differently because they are individuals, and you approach them differently based on the reason for the contact. Right?

So, would any of the following be useful to you, Ace Casino Host?

  • A daily update on your theoretical for the goal period to date
  • A progress report on metrics upon which you could earn a bonus
  • A list of players who haven’t made a trip recently and need a call
  • Players who haven’t made trips as frequently as they used to
  • Newly coded players with whom you haven’t yet made contact
  • Brand-new club members who played well when they signed up
  • Players who have a birthday or other occasion coming up soon
  • Good players who haven’t played as well lately
  • Okay players who have played better recently

Wouldn’t it be awesome if this information was available to you every day? What if it was delivered automatically, waiting in your email inbox, without your having to lift a finger? Or, even better, what if you could log in and see this information whenever it’s convenient for you, and you could quickly note that you had made the call or booked the guest?

It can be. Harvest Trends can help your property configure a PowerHost program specific to your goals and objectives. Ask us how.

In my role as a senior vice president with the Fine Point Group, I have the pleasure of interacting with tribal and commercial casino marketing departments in gaming jurisdictions across the country, and, literally, around the world. When meeting with a client’s marketing team, it’s always exciting to hear about how they want to use data to be more efficient with customer reinvestment, or to be more targeted with direct marketing and to conduct analysis of marketing programs to make ongoing incremental improvements.

Casino Host Goals Setting

Casino

Certainly these are all good and productive ways to use data to improve a casino’s bottom line; however, player development is rarely mentioned in these discussions. This omission has always puzzled me, because casino hosts, at least theoretically, manage the relationships of the casino’s most valuable customers.

Casino Host Goals Images

After a recent focus group with a client’s casino host team, it dawned on me why player development is often omitted from these strategic planning discussions—some senior-level casino industry executives still view the hosting function as a non-strategic, reactive operating function instead of the proactive, sales-centric function that it should be. In many cases, the player development department doesn’t even report to the head of the marketing department; it reports through the table games department.

Casino Host Goals

Casino Host Goals List

No matter where player development reports, you likely have an opportunity to extract significant revenue improvement from your VIP customer database by using simple data analysis coupled with a proactive sales approach to guest hosting.

Casino Host Goals

Late last year, our firm was asked by a multi-property tribal casino operator in the upper Midwest to assist them with an overhaul of their player development program. The tribe owns and operates multiple casinos and restaurants, hundreds of hotel rooms, thousands of slot machines and table games, entertainment venues and even golf courses. They have all the amenities that would cater to VIP-level guests, but had hired only two casino hosts who had never been given any clear direction on how they should be spending their time.

Casino Host Goals 2020

In fact, they spent a good deal of time handling customer complaints, giving breaks to rewards-club representatives and generally serving as a “catch all” department when someone didn’t know how to handle a guest request. This left very little time for them to do the job for which they were hired—building relationships with high-value gamblers.

Casino

Neither host was thrilled with the direction of their careers. As we began working collaboratively with the hosts and the tribe’s management, the organization was totally committed to the process and the final player development strategy was reflective of that commitment and collaboration. By diagnosing the issues and creating a new plan, we utilized the following three steps to guide us through the process:

Define a VIP at your property and assign guests to hosts using a data-driven player development segmentation. Is a VIP a person who visits two or three times a week and is worth $50 a trip or is it a person who visits twice a year and spends $750 per trip? The answer is probably both, and is unique to your property and company based on your market, competitors and customers. How your team manages those accounts is what makes the difference in terms of maximizing the value created by your host team. In the case of the low-worth/high-frequency guest, hosts don’t need to spend a lot of time trying to convince them to visit more frequently. In fact, you may decide not to assign this type of guest to a specific host because everyone that works on property is their host. Everyone from the general manager to the slot attendant is likely familiar with these high-frequency guests and their preferences. On the other hand, the lower-frequency/high-value guest may be loyal to one of your competitors, and it’s the host’s job to convince that guest that there is value in consolidating his or her play at your casino. Simply put, your segmentation should be a guide to help your hosts focus their efforts on guests with revenue upside (new, low-frequency and inactive) and not just on “regulars.”

Make sure you have the right human resources and train them on techniques designed to drive desired guest behaviors within your player development segmentation strategy. Quickly manage out those that don’t buy in or just aren’t aggressive sales people. Train your hosts to liberally communicate and reinvest in new loyalty program enrollees that play at a VIP level. Empower hosts to comp rooms and other perks to guests that live regionally, play at a VIP level and don’t visit your property that often.

Goals

Hold your host team accountable for results. Set baselines and develop standard analysis designed to illustrate each host’s progress toward the goals of your player development segmentation strategy. Meet with each host on a regular basis and review progress relative to their assigned revenue targets within your segmentation. Use these meetings as an opportunity to understand any challenges they are having from a product or service perspective. Open lines of communication can go a long way in creating loyalty within your VIP customer base and your host team.

Casino Host Goals

Because our client was totally committed to flawless execution of a data-driven, proactive player development strategy, the revenue results far exceeded client expectations. In the first five months after implementing the new player development strategy, VIP gaming revenue was up 30.4 percent year-over-year, which translated into millions in incremental gross gaming revenue. Needless to say, you have nothing to lose by using these simple and cost-effective techniques to steal VIP market share from your competitors within this highly profitable business segment.