The business of land casinos
Over the past two decades, online casinos have evolved into one of the most lucrative businesses on the planet. This has also meant that land casinos need to relook at the way they increase their business to beat the competition of online gaming and casinos. Land casinos now, more than ever, need to focus on how to get customer footfall and how to get repeat customers. They also need to know what makes customers return, and what motivates them to gamble.
Why is data important for the casino business?
Land casinos have to consider not just fluctuations in the economy, but also look at what customers seek, where they frequent, what makes customers come into land casinos and gamble, and what brings them back again and again. Here is where data plays a big role.
What is data storytelling?
Data storytelling is the process of translating data analyses into simple terms in order to influence a business decision or action. It means taking the data and its inference and relating it to real-life scenarios in a narrative that makes it easy to understand and to make appropriate decisions based on that data. The narrative takes complex data and simplifies it for easier interpretation, these dashboards will be executed with the use of Visual Analytics tools.
In today’s world of data-driven decisions and tons of data analytical tools, data storytelling is a skill that is taking center-stage in most enterprises. It helps connect the dots between sophisticated data analyses and decision-makers, who may not have the ability to interpret the data. While there are no set standards or guidelines for data storytelling, there are emerging patterns and trends that are used to create the narrative around data. Good data stories often include a “hook” or a device to draw the listener or reader in, and themes that use emotion to add a story to the data, thus helping enterprises move towards a conclusion or a set of conclusions.
How can dashboards and data stories benefit casinos?
Gaming is a risky business – both for the gambler as well as the owner of the casino or resort. The trick to running a successful casino is to attract the right customer, let the customer win a few hands or games to encourage further playing, and keep the customer hooked enough so that the customer returns to the casino. This means that customer behavior needs to be understood well enough. Additionally, the casino needs to minimize the frequency of big wins if it wants to remain solvent.
Today large casino resorts are using big data to examine where and how their customers are spending their money. Studying the patterns allows the facility operators to offer incentives to bigger spenders and to ensure that gamblers do not lose so much money that they leave. Typical data dashboards usually revolve around these points. They capture and present some of the following data points:
- Customer split by cities, sites or gaming products
- Customer footfall – new versus repeat
- Customer spend and winning data
- Trend data for new and repeat customers
- Customer data classified on loyalty points/membership data and more
However, data alone is not sufficient since not all land casino owners can analyze or interpret data in the right way. This is where data stories help augment the dashboards.
Modern casino data stories can relate the story of a customer through its dashboards – you can see when a customer is most likely to visit the casino, how often the customer visits, how much a customer is going to spend at a casino property and so much more.
Often also, the casino business is not standalone. A land casino would often combine a bunch of tables and games, a few restaurants, and other entertainment venues for its patrons. So, understanding the customer journey within the casino and its various sites would be equally vital to understand how to maximize the earnings from the customer. They can also enable casinos to study their players’ habits, which games are most popular and what hotel, spa or restaurant amenities people enjoy the most.
Casinos can then use these data stories to measure the performance of each casino’s offerings, giving it real-time results to make better budgeting and business decisions. Data stories use the raw data and translate them into simpler terms that make it easier for casino owners to understand and interpret, thus allowing the company to see the bigger picture instead of receiving subsets of data from each individual entity. Processing and breaking down data into these understandable stories are also crucial to keeping a casino competitive as more states legalize Gaming. Forty-eight states now allow casinos of some sort whether on land or on a riverboat. The recent additions are giving the traditional and major gaming centers of Las Vegas and Atlantic City a run for their money.
Bizacuity’s Big Data services will help you to come up with appropriate architecture and roadmap.
Conclusion
Data dashboards and data stories are increasingly important for casinos and gaming resorts to stay in business profitably. Data stories help casino owners understand the data and information better, in order to make the right decisions for effective business. These stories help casinos understand their customer behavior better and anticipate their actions in a more predictable manner. This helps casinos run successful businesses. If you find this article interesting, please contact sales@bizacuity.com
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