Do casino managers innovate?

Even for being owned by just a few companies, in some ways you might as well stay in one Casino because so much is the same. OTOH, new ideas do pop up and what is wrong with copying a new idea?

So, do you find casinos are innovative and will do anything to make themselves different, or do you think they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to make a new and better idea happen?

I would think innovation is selective and by no means is it follow the leader but it is often follow someone else who was smart enough and brave enough to do it first.

If a casino goes from Blackjack Dealers to Scantily Clad Blackjack Dealers who rotate onto a Pole is that really innovation? Its a change and its following someone else but not necessarily the industry leader or the leader in their market area. It is just following somebody.

Data Processing innovation, surveillance innovation and the like are viewed differently than gaming floor innovation.

It may be that managerial experience differs and authority differs (particularly if Indian Tribes are involved) but I think that overall casinos tend to be like other businessmen: they don't much care if the idea came from the leader or not, just so long as some other entrepreneur put his money at risk and has worked the kinks out of the idea already.

There are a great many conventions and trade publications. Ideas get transmitted and transmuted. Often various warped innovations backfire to some degree. Don't expect the same beverage to be served in a Seattle coffeeshop and a casino's coffeeshop if you order a Cappacino. Often regulations hobble a casino and sometimes local culture hobbles a casino. As one manager of a poker room said: Manana in New Mexico means the same thing as it does in Old Mexico. It means It Ain't Gonna Happen!

In many respects a gaming floor is similar to a fast food restaurant: every new item requires endless training sessions for which no one really has any time or patience.

Casino managers have a definite follow the pack mentality. They want something throughly tested in another casino before they try it in theirs. Read the casino industry mags and you'll see this all the time. Get this. I called IGT a few months ago and talked to a rep about one of their new products and if it was in Vegas yet. She laughed and told me that Vegas casinos are always the very last to get new products because they want them field tested elsewhere first. They only want what they know works for sure, they don't have space to mess around with something that might fail. If something is working, don't screw with it seems to be the Vegas motto.

Quote: EvenBob

Casino managers have a definite follow the pack mentality. They want something thoroughly tested in another casino before they try it in theirs. ...

This is not just a characteristic of casino management. It seems to be pervasive in well-established industries. There is a common expression that, "Everyone wants to be first in line to be the second one to implement a successful new idea."

It seems that the only place where businesses are openly willing to be the first one to take the risks are those fields that are quite new and populated by entrepreneurs, where you either take risks that could put you out of business or you go out of business because you didn't come up with something brand new.

If you read the annual/quarterly reports sometimes you wonder. Hooter's Casino is suffering catastrophic losses in gaming revenue:
2009 $18,089 39.2%
2008 $24,993 41.6%

However, they do manage to drop expenses so that there is not a huge change in "profit margin" by percentage.

Sometimes you see extravagent claims of excellent management followed by huge bonuses, but if you compare the revenue growth with the market as a whole, there is no difference. I find that casinos almost never appeal to general market percentages unless they lost a lot of money. Then they try to show that they didn't do any worse than the market as a whole. (By market I mean Boulder Strip, or Downtown, or Laughlin, or Strip for a certain revenue range).

If the numbers are good, it is entirely due to smart management.

There was obviously massive sums of money that went into real estate based on inflated projections of earnings. Some of the projections seemed to be inflated even if there was no recession. Notably the $1.3 billion that Goldman Sachs paid for Stratosphere and 3 smaller casinos.

The casinos in the states outside of Vegas are finnally taking their toll on Vegas revenue. People are staying local to gamble, no amount of innovation will ever bring Vegas back to where it was. Everytime a new casino opens, it sticks a pin in the Voodoo doll thats Vegas. If they ever build full gaming casinos in Calif, and they will, Vegas is a goner. It won't go away, just be downsized till its a shadow of what it was.