Casino resort guest experiences – remove friction, make connections

For an optimal casino resorts guest experience, freedom, fun, comfort are the watchwords for success. This hasn’t changed all that much since the industry began. But times and contexts that define those key objectives change all the time. With them, casinos and resorts organizations must change too, by looking at what a great experience means today and what it will come to mean tomorrow.

To examine this constructively, it’s vital to consider the subject of friction and how to reduce it for the contemporary player and guest. With modern expectations in place, one size fits all simply doesn’t apply. These days, the player guest experience must be modular and personalized, with all elements of a stay being seamless and uninterrupted. What are some of the best ways to achieve this? Consider these ideas.

Set the scene for a continuous, enjoyable stay

Casino resort technology, processes, devices, and intuitive UI design aren’t the destination in ensuring great experiences. They’re just the vehicles to get players and guests to where they want to be; an enjoyment of consistently welcoming, continuous, and comfortable atmospheres during their stay.

To set the scene for a great player guest experience, it’s important to regularly assess how well a casino resort technology and processes currently serve enjoyable, friction-free environments. Here are some essential questions that can lead development and investment to help organizations focus on serving their experiences more effectively.

• How well do resort hospitality software processes align to player and guest familiarity and comfort as they seek to book a hotel room, a VIP lounge, a private event, amenities, etc.?
• How aligned are the processes in place at casino resort properties to enable player-guests to get what they want via mobile during their stay?
• How easily is relevant information accessed on the property in the appropriate context – push notifications, QR scans, SMS, etc.?
• How does access to account status, comps, rewards, etc., connect people - player guests and staff alike – to better and more productive communications?

These essential questions and others help to set the scene for freedom, fun, and comfort in all locations. They also help identify sources of friction. From there, it’s easier to establish a basis for making focused operational improvements to foster a better experience for everyone.

Create pathways to connection for players and guests

A player guest is not interested in operational efficiency – at least not in the same way an operations team is. Ops teams want to manage the elements of a great stay – as they should. But player guests just want to experience them, unimpeded. They need to be connected to meaningful ways to do that, enabled by technology.

Clear and cohesive pathways from one stage of their stay to another should characterize the basic activities of their journey, including:

• Finding the offering easily on multiple channels with consistent and current pricing
• Reviewing upgrade options and adding them easily before confirming a booking
• Checking in and arranging room access before arrival via mobile
• Requesting additional services at any time during that stay, wherever they are
• Accessing account status and available rewards from gaming activities

When technology is in place to create intuitive, flexible, and connected pathways between stops along the player guest journey, that vital sense of cohesion becomes the basis for how well they’ll judge and rate their experience. That helps organizations to build valuable relationships with them, and to encourage return visits.

Establish a scalable approach.

As consumer trends and technology continue to inform each other, scalable strategy and the technology in support of it are essential. So are regular assessments around how well organizations are adapting to change, and where the gaps are. Long-term partnerships inclusive of a wide spectrum of expertise, internal and external, enables organizations to invest in new solutions and enable new ways of meeting evolving consumer expectations.

Stability and focus are important, too. To create them, the central mission to deliver player and guest freedom, fun, and comfort is always the surest foundation. With them always in mind while scaling toward the future and questioning the status quo along the way, that focus becomes second nature. In fact, it is revealed as the clearest path to ongoing success.

Success in a changing industry

In what ways has your organization helped to create frictionless paths and connections for your players and guests? What have been some of the biggest successes for you? What part has technology played in helping you achieve them?

Infor is engaged with the casino and resorts industry. Our emphasis is around the power of partnership as the right path to creating success for everyone in a changing industry.

To learn more about how we serve casinos and resorts, you’re invited to explore our hospitality software for casinos and gaming page.