Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | May 2011 30 Life changer— the launch of Dragon’s Treasure Floorwide Jackpot at City of Dreams in this part of the world, we feel we understand the behaviour of customers here better than anybody else. “For example, if someone from China comes into your property, [even] if you didn’t grow up in this part of the world and study the culture in China, you might be able to recognise that person comes from northern China, and from that conclude they like spicy food. But then what’s the difference between this guy and somebody from Thailand? Mr Chan points out Melco Crown Entertainment constantly strives to learn more about its customers. “For any strategy setup or marketing initiative, the number one goal is to know your customer. So we spend quite a lot of time understanding customer behaviour. “We have a database of 600,000 members. We do a lot of data mining exercises to find out who are the best customers, the middle customers, and smaller customers, who we put into different tiers so we’ll be able to align the right service to the right type of customer. That enables us to increase the loyalty level of the customer. We’d like to do this with slots and tables, but with slots it’s easier because slot players are used to member cards, and you can track the record of every wager they do. But with table players it’s difficult. There’s no system that offers 100% accurate tracking of table players.” New gaming concepts The two latest gaming initiatives from City of Dreams, based on its core values of innovation and knowing its customers, are the ‘Red Hot Tables’concept for baccarat players and the ‘New Game Zone’for slot players. Red Hot Tables incorporate the world’s first baccarat trend indicator, where LED lights surrounding the baccarat displays light up yellow once a run of three winning banker or player hands has been recorded, orange once the run is extended to four hands, and red once the run reaches five hands or more. This system, installed over 220 baccarat tables at City of Dreams, allows players to spot tables with streaks of banker/player wins at a distance. Mr Chan explains this helps mass market customers, particularly those who are fairly new to baccarat, find a table they may want to bet at. “In the past, when a mainstream player goes to a casino with ten tables, from any spot they can check out the table results and see where they want to go and wager a little bit. But now, when they come to a casino with 100 or 200 tables, it’s too large to do that. So which table should they pick? When the Red Hot Tables indicator lights up at one of the tables, it could help them to pick ‘that one. I’ll go there.’ “So that’s the whole concept. It sounds very simple, but unfortunately, nobody in the world is doing it except for us. We are the only ones because we know that is what the customer would like to do. “It’s not rocket science, but if you do it on the main casino floor, you have to resolve a lot of technical issues. So that beautiful fringe lighting around the display screens, and the recording of results is all linked. I think we solved those issues quite well. In terms of technology, if we’re not the best, we’re probably one of the top casinos in the world.” Another simple but effective concept is the ‘New Game Zone’, where players can easily find the latest new electronic gaming machines. “This idea is not new. It’s just a shelf of new products,” explains Mr Chan. “In addition to giving our customers easy access to new products, it also helps us with our slot purchasing strategy. We talk with the suppliers, and say ‘what if we can have this kind of area and put your new product there, and if it’s working well, we will purchase it. “Setting up the ‘New Game Zone’ took months of negotiation, and it enables us to leverage the market developments this year, with suppliers having difficulty selling their products in other markets around the world. So now we are just launching that concept with Red means go—one of the Red Hot Tables at City of Dreams Talking Heads