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In order to stay solvent and competitive with other forms of entertainment, the gaming industry must maintain a constant balancing act. Casinos and their resorts have to take the fluctuations of the economy into account all while following local ordinances. New markets also open up as more states legalize gambling, creating new opportunities to branch out and new competitors.

However, all of these factors are superfluous compared to the all-important task of how to keep customers coming back. Luckily, gaming centers are turning to data analytics to make the gaming experience better for customers while also keeping the casinos solvent.

Keep them coming back
Gambling can be a risky endeavor, not only for the player but also for the casino and resort. The relationship between the patron and the house is always delicate. Resorts and their gaming centers must allow gamblers to win a few hands or games to encourage them to keep playing. No patron would return to the tables, wheels or machines if they only saw the house winning. Additionally, the facility needs to minimize the frequency of big wins if it wants to remain solvent.

“Casinos are turning to data analytics to make the gaming experience better for customers.”

According to Yahoo! Finance, some large casino resorts are using big data and analytics to examine where their customers are spending their money when at the hotel whether it be on a particular slot machine or out to dinner in one of venue’s restaurants. Studying the patterns allows the facility operators to offer incentives to bigger spenders and to ensure that gamblers don’t lose so much money that they leave.

“They could win a lot or they lose a lot or they could have something in the middle,” Gary Loveman, CEO of Caesars Entertainment told Yahoo Finance. “So we do try to make sure that people don’t have really unfortunate visits.”

Data analytics also enables casinos to study their players’ habits, which games are most popular and what hotel, spa or restaurant amenities people enjoy the most.

Organizing all parts
This type of information is especially vital to resorts that feature many amenities for their patrons.

MGM Resorts used data analytics tools to measure the performance of each of the hospitality giant’s venues, giving it real-time results to make better budgeting and business decisions.

Data analytics software organizes all the information, allowing the company to see the bigger picture instead of receiving subsets of data from each individual eatery, spa or gaming center under its purview.

“We don’t have a single core business – we have multiple divisions which all operate according to very different principles and on different daily cycles,” Kelly Lister, vice president of the Financial Shared Services Center at MGM, said. “Our restaurants and entertainment venues just don’t behave in the same way as our casinos or our hotels – each has its own specific performance drivers. Yet we need to be able to gain an accurate overview of how all these businesses interact in order to make the right decisions. And because our industry moves so quickly, we need this insight in real time, on a daily basis.”

Processing and analyzing the information is also crucial to keeping a resort competitive as more states legalize gambling. Forty-eight states now allow casinos of some sort whether on land or on a riverboat. The recent additions are giving the traditional and major gaming centers of Las Vegas and Atlantic City a run for their money.