Inside Asian Gaming

Oct 2007 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 19 selling dreams and excitement, albeit in a controlled, responsible environment. There’s a fine line though between selling them a super sized dream and leaving them feeling exhausted just from walking around it. Repeat visitors The noted casino designer Paul Steel- man, who designed LVS’ Sands Macao, told Inside Asian Gaming in June:“Casinos are fun when they offer a multiplicity of experience, a multiplicity of choice, and when you leave it, it’s very important that that you see and you feel like you have not seen it all.We want you to come back.” Given the size of The Venetian, anyone attempting to see all of it on the first visit will need a lot of time and a lot of stamina. Mr Steelman says that as curves tend to occur more often in nature than do right angles, the trick is to use them as a way of guiding your patrons. “We don’t make any straight lines, be- cause if you can’t see everything, you don’t experience everything. But we don’t want to make them confused either. If you make them confused, that’s a problem, because when people are confused they tend to stay for a shorter time,”he explains. Notably, Mr Steelman is not a fan of “themed” casinos—he says the current “mil- lennial generation” believes they will travel to all the world’s exotic destinations in their lifetime, and therefore are not interested in “faux” things—and was not responsible for the Venetian. Design vital How people respond to a casino’s de- sign can have a direct impact on the opera- tor’s bottom line. Mr Steelman says casinos don’t put mirrors near the betting areas in case gamblers glance at their reflection and realise they’re not James Bond.Studies in the US suggest there is a correlation between the ability of gamblers to see the gaming room exits and their willingness to keep on placing bets. Customers who don’t feel as if they’re caught in a rat trap are willing to bet for an average of five minutes longer. A piece of real estate, whether it’s a fac- tory making cars or a pleasure factory such as a casino, needs to be fit for purpose. If users do find it confusing, or annoying or otherwise poorly designed, it really doesn’t matter whether the taps in the bathrooms cost US$10 apiece or US$30, whether the building has a mural made of 80,000 pieces of crystal or whether a famous feng shui expert has been called in to help. A casino space that works is the best form of market- ing an operator can have, as Sands Macao has so clearly shown. Bigger Versus Better The endless static-building corridors of Venetian Macao