In the sleepy hamlet in the lovely Santa Ynez valley of Southern California, about 45 minutes Northwest of Santa Barbara, the Chumash Band of Santa Ynez Indians have built a robust gaming resort enterprise. Startingfrom humble beginnings as a bingo hall, the resort currently encompasses two hotels, including the only AAA Four Diamond property in the region, a spa, 2,000 electronic gaming machines, 40 table games, 14 pokertables, the 1,300-seat Shamala Showroom, several restaurants, and more.
Challenge
Needless to say, as the Chumash Casino Resort continued to grow from a bingo hall to a small EGM venue to a full-fledged resort, at each step it was critical to maintain or grow the monthly revenues, cash flow, and net income. The first step – moving into the new casino– was a critical one, but was quickly followed with the opening of the hotel, the Shamala Showroom, the spa, the addition of a second hotel, and the current expansionto bring a new, expanded poker area, high-limitgaming room, and open-plan gaming floor to their customers. Maintaining customer loyalty, maintaining or increasing revenue per guest, and consistently growing customer base, were there three largest challenges in this process.
Says Bill Peters, Vice President of Gaming Operations,“We’ve had to maintain high single-digit and often double-digit growth, monthly, while at the same time making huge capital expenditures to build out our infrastructure. The CRM solutions from Tech Resultshave been a critical enabler in achieving that growth, month after month, and delivering the results our shareholders expect.”
Results
In August 2004, Chumash Casino Resort adopted TotalPromo™, the first product in the Tech Results suite. It quickly became a centerpiece of their marketing efforts. Says Peter Saccullo, Director of IT and Slot Operations,“Total Promo™ has been critical to Chumash’s success these last three years. We run promotions with staggering regularity [five days a week], but do it becausewe have seen proven results from those promotions,time and time again. We couldn’t manage the volume of participation and interest we have without TotalPromo™, and we couldn’t keep it so exciting for ourguests without the levels of customization and differentiation available to us with the product.”
Operations
In August 2005, Chumash Casino Resort added WAGER™ (now part of Aristocrat’s System 7000PRIME™ Enterprise) to its stable of Tech Results’ CRM products. Peter says “WAGER let us close the loop on the success of our promotions, and really see where the impact was coming. We dialed-back in some areas, and increased our investment in others. The process offine-tuning continues to today – but the increases keepgoing up.”
Peter also went on to talk about how the ability to capture data from multiple locations – restaurants, events, door entries, hotel stays, and so forth – has enabled Chumash to really trace down what combination of elements is most successful. “For example, our Monday night event combines regional music, a special regional menu in the buffet, and a combination of regionally-themed prize and cash giveaways, and the results have never been better!”
Finally, in spring 2006, Chumash added the Host VIP! (now part of Aristocrat’s System 7000 PRIME™ Enterprise) enterprise player development solution to their suite of products. Says Bill Peters “We rebuilt our entire host department to leverage the power of Host VIP! It tells us more about our players than we ever knew and it gives everyone who interacts with our most important guests the ability to service those guests not only better than they ever could in the past, but better than anyone else in the market can.”
Moreover, Chumash has found (using WAGER) that the ability to communicate closely with the guests provides not only a greater level of guests satisfaction, but also typically does it at a reduced reinvestment cost.
