Casino hotels and resorts have extremely complex operations that encompass gaming, accommodations, food and beverage, and entertainment. All of which are run by different departments and operations that run on different types of software.
However, the customer sees this as one experience. In order to maximize revenue and have a holistic picture of what is happening with your guests, casino hotels and resorts need tight integration among their key platforms. These platforms typically include:
- The Casino Management System: Contains all player valuation and promotional eligibility
- The Property Management System: Contains all information relating to a guest’s stay
- The Revenue Management Software: Determines what rate to offer the guest based on various elements, such as pick-up, compression, competitive intelligence, etc.
How a lack of integration causes inefficiency
When the platforms mentioned above operate independently from one another, a casino hotel just isn’t able to operate nearly as efficiently as possible. Dealing with guest phone calls is just one example of how this can cause issues for both hotel staff and guests.
Consider the following example: a guest calls up a casino hotel group and says, “I’m coming to Las Vegas from December 7th to December 10th, and I’ve got around a $120 to spend a night. What have you got for me?”
In many cases, casino groups rely on a single call center for all of their properties. So the call center agent in this scenario would have to independently login to a separate PMS, CRM, and revenue management system of each hotel in the group to check those stay dates.
Simultaneously, they would have to check the loyalty platform for each hotel to check what offers the guest was eligible to book.
This long-winded process means a casino resort can’t manage as many overall calls, which can have a significant impact on booking revenue.
These delays don’t need to happen. With a specialized casino CRS, a call center agent can easily conduct a brand-wide search in a single system. When you consider that large casino hotels deal with hundreds of thousands of calls per month, the benefits of ensuring that guests receive optimal service over the phone are huge.
Goals of a specialized casino CRS solution
Currently, a large casino group must manage multiple silos of data in order to to get a full picture of their customers: reservation data from the CRS, revenue data from the RMS, room and guest data from the PMS, player and loyalty data from the casino management system.
A specialized CRS solution designed specifically for casino hotels would pull all this data together so that it can be managed from a more streamlined backend. The benefits of such a system include:
#1: Holistic profiles: A specialized casino CRS with tight integration to the casino management system and PMS allows managers to easily get a 360- profile of guests. This is particularly important when it comes to VIP guests, top casino players, and ‘whales’. Having a holistic picture of what’s happening with your guests means that your resort can more easily accommodate their needs and requests and reward their loyalty with comped suites and room upgrades.
#2: Operational efficiencies on key platforms: In a specialized casino CRS solution, tight integrations between the CRS, PMS, revenue management system, merchandising system, and loyalty platform allows for faster decision making and time saved by revenue managers. For example, if you were to enter a rate plan in the PMS, the rate would seamlessly sync to the other systems, thus minimizing time spent on data entry and reducing the chance of human error.
#3: Maximizing revenue: A specialized casino CRS platform should provide dynamic pricing tools that give hotels the flexibility to execute complex revenue strategies. For instance, a sophisticated CRS lets revenue managers create unique promotions and offers through rate plans for different channels, and allows pricing to be quickly adjusted and updated across all channels.
Key CRS and booking engine features for casinos
A specialized casino CRS and booking engine comes with a range of invaluable features that all casinos can benefit from:
