Why you should have a text messaging solution for your casino — and how to find the right one in 2022

Casinos operate in a highly competitive world. Every guest counts. Every dollar counts as well. 

Text messaging solutions, sometimes called digital concierges, in casinos are at times the reason why players prefer one casino over another. They impact profits. If you are thinking about bringing a digital concierge into your casino this year to positively impact your guests and your profits, read on! We have you covered.  

Have you already decided to hire a digital concierge for your casino? See Revinate Ivy in action. 

What you can see here

• What’s a digital concierge?
• How do you know your casino needs a digital concierge?
• What can digital concierges in casinos deliver?
• ROI and digital concierges in casinos
• How to find the right digital concierge for your casino
  

What’s a text messaging solution?

Concierges and VIP hosts at casinos work long hours with normal shifts extending well beyond 8 hours. Additionally, they are often on call 24/7 since guests and players text them even when the hosts are not on the floor. During peak season, the New Year holiday, for instance, most concierges end up spending 12 to 16 hours in the casino. 

Sustaining this without compromising on guest satisfaction and experience is hard. Consider too that some casinos assign a single concierge to high-end guests for their entire stay, delighting guests immensely. With the current staffing crisis, casinos are struggling to fill this role as well, leaving it to other staff members to take care of guests and players.    

What if you could extend that same level of service that comes from a dedicated concierge to all your guests? What if you could do that without additional staff while reducing the stress on your existing team, offering contactless hospitality, and keeping your overhead costs low? 

A text messaging solution can deliver against all three objectives. Available to guests 24/7, a digital concierge texts with guests answering their questions in real-time, with no change in enthusiasm. Beyond guest engagement, digital concierges also deliver ROI through increased gameplay and ancillary spending on property.   

How do you know your casino needs a text messaging solution?

Your guests want it, even if they don’t tell you!

Text messaging solutions leverage a key habit: guests prefer to text. 

78% of people would rather communicate with businesses via text over any other method. Another survey in 2020 talks about how guests prefer to handle everything from hotel registration and meal ordering from the convenience of their smartphones. This one too flagged that almost 72% of respondents said that they would prefer to text for help in real-time compared to 42% who said they would like to talk to someone using video. 

With the almost universal use of smartphones, texting with a digital concierge is convenient and will elevate their experience while at your casino. 

Your staff needs a digital concierge too! 

Text messaging solutions take a huge load off the front desk and in-house staff. As much as 60% of queries can be automated. This means that your staff won’t be spending their time dealing with routine, repetitive inquiries. Their productivity levels are bound to increase in such a scenario. 

If you’re worried that your staff might feel insecure, don’t. Data and research from Cornell University shows that staff appreciates when automation reduces the tedious aspects of their workload, freeing them to handle more complex guest queries consequently increasing job satisfaction levels.

A combination of AI-powered automated responses from a digital concierge and energized staff can help you build long-term relationships with your casino guests and players.

What can text messaging solutions in casinos deliver?

Digital concierges deliver delighted guests, and productive and appreciative staff, while directly impacting your profits.

Here are some of the advantages of having a digital concierge at your casino. 

Make every guest feel like a high roller

Digital concierges are always there to support your guests and answer their inquiries, even at 2 am! AI-powered text messaging solutions often give guests a feeling that they are texting with a real person at the other end. Imagine offering real-time messaging and making every guest think they are being handled by a personal concierge? Guest delight? Bingo!

Build loyalty

The casino industry is known for innovation in designing and implementing loyalty marketing programs. Clubs, ratings, and tracking systems enable casinos to learn and increase the yield from their best customer programs. Text messaging solutions enhance this ability for casinos to use intelligent text messaging to make personalized offers and increase loyalty among guests. 

Resolve issues and improve guest experience

Casino owners can leverage a text messaging solution to offer guests quick solutions to standard issues and requests. By providing instant communication and connected services, text messaging solutions improve guest satisfaction and provide an elevated guest experience.

Tell you more about your guests

A text messaging solution allows you to build a knowledge base of your valued guests so you can improve guest service and easily look back into the conversation history. Surprise your repeat guests with their favorite drinks!

Centralize tracking for all requests 

Record requests and incidents for all reservations, wake-up calls, transportation, room service, or any other service. By using a single communication channel (text messaging), casinos can have a record of all guest interactions in one place. For every guest!

Gives you transparency across shifts and teams 

A text messaging solution keeps a history of the conversation which is easily accessible by all departments. Concierge software provides transparency to the entire guest services team and offers an improved way to collaborate on guest requests. 

Deliver personalized, on-demand experiences

Using their mobile phones to text, guests can converse with a virtual or digital concierge to find tables, make reservations, check concert schedules, and book tickets to shows. A text messaging solution also enables guests to “design” their own experience. This provides an opportunity for casinos to be more personalized in their customer offerings. 

Free up staff time

Large casinos can struggle to meet the expectations of their guests due to sheer volume, especially around peak evening times, and check-in and check-out times. 

A text messaging solution frees up desk agents allowing them to focus on the more complex guest inquiries. When integrated with call centers, guests can speak directly with guest service agents when the digital concierge doesn’t have a ready answer.

Analyze guests’ interaction

Casinos, like everyone else, are trying to better understand what makes their guests happier to design a more appealing environment. Data obtained through a text messaging solution can offer valuable insights which you can further capitalize on.

Develop a personality

Digital concierges are often mistaken for actual people chatting with guests! As a result, with the right input, the technology can create a customized persona to simulate the positioning the casino wishes to showcase and help you stand out in a crowded industry.

Enable check-in via text messages

Text messaging solutions can ask guests to send a text when they land, offer express check-in, and share room numbers automatically. Guests can walk straight to their rooms or the casino floor without having to visit the front desk. No more peak-hour lobby jams!

ROI and text messaging solutions in casinos

Within the casino industry, we know that good revenue management when combined with guest relationship practices can maximize the overall profits. 

Text messaging solutions can offer up casino credit, compensations, airfare reimbursements, discounts, promotional chips, personalized discounts, shopping sprees, and special access to facilities. All of these are additional revenue streams for casinos. 

Let’s look at some of the ways a digital concierge can impact profits at your casino. 

Extend personalized offers to players

Text messaging solutions can message in-house guests about late checkouts and extended stay deals just before the guest’s departure. The system can be used to deploy specific, targeted messages based on rewards programs, loyalty tiers, or other players club membership levels. 

Booking benefits

According to Cognizant’s Hospitality in the Digital Era whitepaper, every time a guest is inspired to book through a provider’s proprietary channel over an intermediary, it results in savings of up to 20%. Text messaging solutions can offer casinos a new proprietary channel to offer reservations, by integrating with the hotel’s back-end property management and reservations systems. The technology can even be used to upsell rooms and promotions in line with guest preferences.

Perks and profitability

Las Vegas casinos today get more than half of their revenue from non-gambling sources, such as hotel rooms, retail, and food and beverage sales. Caesars Entertainment generated approximately $4.45 billion in revenue from its casinos in 2019 with $4 billion more coming from non-gaming sources. Rather than bombarding your guests with marketing messages, a digital concierge can help improve your profitability by making relevant and intelligent offers in a timely and intimate way. 

Convinced? Read on

How to find the right text messaging solution for your casino

IT and tech innovation teams at casinos are leading the charge with the implementation and turnaround times of advanced technologies. Facial recognition, RFIDs, and data modeling are now fairly commonplace in several casinos. 

Deploying a text messaging solution doesn’t involve the complexities of these advanced technologies. Often, they can be implemented in less than 2 weeks. 

Here are some factors to consider as you choose the right digital concierge for your casino:

Touch-points for guests and players

The first step is to research how the digital concierge will work and interact with all your departments as well as across the guest journey. By studying this, you can create a detailed map of all the potential touch-points. Remember to include data from online and offline interactions, such as reservations, mobility, and onsite events.

If you have a list of all the instances where a digital concierge can interact with your guests, you are better equipped to find the right text messaging solution.  

Round-the-clock support

For any casino, round-the-clock service is essential. So before investing in any text messaging solution, ask about the online support team or dedicated assistance to avoid losses due to technical failures or downtime.

Scalability

All casinos have periods when they are extremely busy. While choosing a text messaging solution, you will need to ask if yours will be able to handle a higher volume of guests during a special event.

The right solution will scale to your casino requirements both in terms of messaging volume and costs. 

Security and compliance

Security and privacy are critical factors to casinos, their guests, and players. Consequently, the digital concierge you choose must offer the data security and legal protocols to ensure compliance with all your industry standards.

Integration with your tech stack 

Collecting data to draw out insights into guest preferences is essential for you to achieve a return on your investment. You can gather insights only if your digital concierge integrates with your existing tech stack – PMS (Property Management Systems), CRMs, and payment gateways. Check the level of integration required for each platform. Failure to investigate this can lead to lost time and higher costs.

Pricing model

Choosing the right digital concierge depends on the feature set, implementation speed, and price point. It is equally important to consider if the solution has pricing flexibility such as paying based on bandwidth or guest use. Some product companies even offer tier-based pricing based on the level of features required. Keep this in mind as you shortlist the right vendor. 

Actionable data 

For personalization to be truly elevated, casinos must be able to have actionable data across departments. If your current data structure exists in silos, you should consider addressing this before deploying a digital concierge. 

Reporting and analytics

Advanced analytics can identify the right promotional triggers that keep guests coming back. Hoteliers have shown that they can leverage predictive analytics to personalize promotions that boost consumer acceptance rates by 300% in one year.

Training

While many digital concierge products are considered intuitive to use, and no more complicated than text messaging, some vendors will offer training and can often schedule training ahead of time for new staff as they join to ensure there are no hiccups. 

Adding intelligence: digital casino concierges get smarter

As the technology continues to evolve, we will see an increase in self-learning and improvement in communication nuances. This level of intelligence or artificial intelligence can be applied effectively to guest-facing technologies such as the text messaging solution. Remember to check if your choice of technology offers AI capabilities such as natural language processing and voice recognition.

In 2022, it is becoming harder than ever for casinos to attract guests to their resorts. With text messaging solutions, casinos can offer guests an experience that is well beyond standardized offerings.

If you would like to experience first-hand how a text messaging solution can work in your casino, ask to see Ivy in action.