BEST PRACTICES: Putting it all together
by Rory Fagan
October 1, 2008
Hard Rock Casino-Hotel in Las Vegas.
Predictive analytics helps Hard Rock casino-hotel deliver unparalleled customer service
Sustainable profitability
and growth in the gaming industry are being
fueled by analytics and business intelligence software more than ever before.
While
gaming is a key contributor to revenue, rooms, retail, food and beverage, spas
and entertainment are quickly growing as sources of income. For example, Hard
Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas
offers a unique entertainment and gaming experience with dozens of services and
amenities normally associated with a boutique luxury resort hotel. Guests can
choose from the hotel and casino, pool, the nightclub, rock venue, restaurants,
cocktail lounges; retail stores; spas, salon and fitness
center.
Hard
Rock executives already had a wealth of information about its patrons and
prospects. But bringing gaming and nongaming data together from all of these
different sources to create a total patron view was a major challenge to
marketing executives.
SAS, a business intelligence
software provider, is helping Hard Rock constructively use all of its data and
that’s paying off big time. Using SAS for “patron value optimization,” decision
makers can draw insights from data to understand total patron spend in order to
enhance customer experience and build loyalty.
“In
customer intelligence, SAS is king,” said Dean Boswell, chief financial officer
of Hard Rock. “SAS for Patron Value Optimization enables better, faster
decisions so we can proactively service guests while they are on property. We are working to know our customers better
so we can deliver unparalleled customer service—giving priority to the most
profitable patrons across our property.”
Boswell
noted that SAS’ solutions are paying off.
“We’re onto something big
with SAS,” he said. “Early on, we used SAS for an email campaign to VIP
customers—carving up lists was fast and effective. In early marketing campaigns, SAS also helped
uncovered data quality issues. SAS makes quick work of highlighting missing
data on a customer and reporting that so staff can gather the missing
information—an email address or a cell phone number that’s needed to text
message them, for example. As a result, our data accuracy improved 15 percent
since the beginning of the year. That’s a big win. We need good data to be able
to reach out to customers.”
Percentage game
In the
gaming industry, as little as 1 percent of overall customers can be driving as
much as 20 percent of company revenue. Historical data shows how often a
customer visits Hard Rock, but predictive models reveal which customers are
best to invite back.
“Predictive
analytics is absolutely a game changer,” Boswell said. “A few customers can
make or break you. If we don’t have the right guests, we’re gambling on making
a profit. Understanding how people spend, we can work to ensure that enough of
the best customers are here at any given time. Using SAS to automate campaigns
will help us ensure that enough of those customers continue to walk into the
property each day.”
Segmenting
patrons by booking trends, behavioral factors and other relevant business
patterns allows decision makers to gain valuable business insights, including
guests’ preferences, likelihood to respond to promotions and emerging travel
trends. With SAS, Hard Rock can automate and personalize marketing campaigns
that are less costly and more successful.
SAS
reporting and data visualization tools are poised to ease information sharing
across the enterprise, among guest-facing personnel, decision makers and
business analysts.
“SAS for Patron Value
Optimization arms Hard Rock decision makers with fact-based insights so they
don’t have to rely on intuition only,” said Rory Fagan, sales manager for hospitality
and gaming. “With SAS, Hard Rock can measure, track and predict patron activity
and spend across the property, providing a total patron view at a glance. Hard
Rock is becoming more competitive through targeted marketing and by making the
changes needed to enhance customer experience. Nothing surfaces customer
intelligence better than SAS for Patron Value Optimization.”
Smarter growth
With
the softening of the economy, the gaming industry is growing at a slower rate
than years before. Always forward thinking, Hard Rock is in the midst of
expansion that will continue through 2009 – doubling the size of casino space,
tripling the room number and adding 50,000 square feet of meeting space.
Competition is growing too, but SAS for Patron Value Optimization is helping
Hard Rock earn the customer loyalty it needs to gain a growing share of
wallet.
Working
with WhiteSand Consulting and Qualex Consulting Services, SAS delivers gaming
specific enterprise intelligence to casinos through the SAS Enterprise
Intelligence Platform. By integrating individual technology components in the
company’s existing information technology infrastructure into a single, unified
system, the information flow transcends organizational silos and delivers new insights
that help drive growth and profitability.
Optimizing resources by
drawing the most profitable patrons into the hotel, casino floor, events and
spa is maximizing patron profit and loss and helping Hard Rock executives meet
their growth goals. And, the company’s best guests are finding more reasons to
come back more often.
Rory Fagan
is
sales manager for SAS’ Hospitality & Gaming division. He is responsible for
working with SAS’s hospitality and gaming partners to deliver solutions to meet
their everyday operational needs. Prior to joining SAS, Fagan led the sales and
marketing efforts for PROS Revenue Management in the hotel and cruise markets.
He also held key sales management positions with leading travel industry
companies, such as Hertz, United Airlines and Sabre Holdings. He holds a BBA
in marketing from the University of Texas at Austin and a
MBA from Rice University. He may be reached at
Rory.Fagan@sas.com, or by phone at (712) 636-2178.
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