Gaming and Casino Operations Management Commons^™

Examining The High-End Gaming Segment: Toward A Shift In Market Focus, Jiaqi Wu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Las Vegas gaming and hospitality industry has seen many changes over the last two decades. For the longest time, casinos were illegal everywhere except in Nevada, and gambling was viewed as a vice. It was not until the 1970s when attitudes started to shift. The Nevada Gaming Control Board was established to oversee and govern many aspects of the business, in order to promote the industry and reduce the perceived negative social impacts. LVCVA (Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority) also strategically promotes the city as the ideal tourist destination. Las Vegas has now become a highly competitive tourist …

The Free-Play Tax Deduction Debate: How Academic Research Can Help, Anthony F. Lucas, Katherine Spilde

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Free-play is the primary play incentive for slot players in many jurisdictions, with some campaigns eclipsing $50 million in annual redemptions. The efficacy of these incentives remains questionable at best, creating some contentious tax policy issues. Operators want to deduct the face value of these offers from taxable gaming win, based in part on the assumption that they expand the tax base; however, many regulators and taxing authorities question this claim. Any failure to fully recover redeemed free-play creates a deduction that is partially funded by tax payers. Arguments on both sides of this complex tax policy issue are thoroughly …

2018 Chinese New Year Special Events Planning For Casino Resorts In Las Vegas, Qidan Guo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is the most important holiday in the Chinese culture and is celebrated at the beginning of the Lunar Calendar each year. Not only does the festival have significant impact in China, it is also widely celebrated in Asia as a whole. Due to the fact that about 80 percent of Las Vegas’ biggest whales are from Asia, most of them baccarat players from China and Hong Kong (Rivlin, 2007), the Chinese New Year is also one of the most influential events on the Strip. Although the games and promotions offered by …

Foreign Exchange Rate Effect On International Gaming Demand: An Examination From An Upscale Las Vegas Casino, Myongjee Yoo, Ashok K. Singh, Kasra Ghaharian

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Las Vegas has developed into one of the world’s top tourist destinations, and the international market has become a vital stream of the city’s revenue. The objective of this study was to understand the foreign exchange rate as a determinant for international gaming demand in the Las Vegas gaming industry. This study applied the econometric modeling method of panel data analysis to secondary data originated from a Las Vegas Strip casino property. This study attempted to validate the foreign exchange effect through empirical investigation. Results of this study showed that foreign exchange rate has an impact on international gaming demand.

Of The Rat Pack, Ashtrays, Cocktail Napkins, And Grateful Losers: The Making Of The Las Vegas Experience As A Historical Process In The 20th Century, Paul Franke

Occasional Papers

This paper explores how Las Vegas casino executives have successfully produced a unique gaming experience. From the 1950s onwards they were able to use architecture, entertainment and business practices to link games of chance with a specific consumption experience for players. It will examine what sets the Las Vegas consumption experience apart from other gaming locations, what it consisted of, and how it was produced by the casinos. It also investigates how people between the 1950s and 1980s perceived and consumed the Las Vegas experience. Drawing from these observations the paper argues that the special of Las Vegas in gaming …

Forgotten Femmes, Forgotten War: The Kim Sisters’ Disappearance From American Screen And Scene, Danielle Seid

Occasional Papers

This paper explores the performance history of the Korean girl group The Kim Sisters, once highly visible racial icons, within the social and cultural context of 1960s Cold War America and popular entertainment culture. The Kim Sisters’ disappearance from American screen and scene raises questions about public memory of the Korean War, the status of Asian American performers in popular entertainment industries, and shifting attitudes about race, gender, and sexuality in the 1960s. Focusing in particular on the production and reception of their feminine beauty on stage and television, this paper highlights the Kims’ early years in the newly-formed Republic …

Budd Revisited - Gambling In Great Britain 15 Years On, Daniel Waugh Mr

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

In 2000, Sir Alan Budd, the noted economist was asked by the British Government to chair a review of the nation’s gambling laws. The resulting ‘The Report of the Gambling Review Body’ (referred to here as ‘The Budd Report’ or ‘Budd’) was published a year later and provided a blueprint for how gaming and betting would subsequently be regulated under a major new piece of legislation - the Gambling Act 2005 (the ‘2005 Act’ or the ‘Gambling Act’).

The work of the Gambling Review Body (the ‘Review Body’) was undertaken at considerable expense and effort – more than 200 submissions …

Forecasting Casino Gaming Traffic With A Data Mining Alternative To Croston’S Method, Barry E. King

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Other researchers have used Croston’s method to forecast traffic at casino game tables. Our data mining alternative to Croston’s method more accurately forecasts gaming traffic using the rich databases that are frequently available at casinos. A more accurate forecast will allow for better planning of staffing on the casino floor.

Customer Retention: Reducing Online Casino Player Churn Through The Application Of Predictive Modeling, Eunju Suh, Matt Alhaery

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

With the potential expansion of legalized online gaming in the United States as well as in the global market, customer retention is critical to the continued growth and success of an online casino. While customer churn prediction can be an essential part of customer retention efforts, it has received very little attention in the gaming literature. Using historical online gaming data, this study examines whether player churn (attrition) can be predicted through an application of a decision tree data mining algorithm called Exhaustive CHAID (E-CHAID). The results of this empirical study suggest that the predictive model based on the E-CHAID …

Contextualizing Indian Gaming For The National Gambling Impact Study Commission, Laurie Arnold

Occasional Papers

This paper discusses the Indian Gaming Subcommittee of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC). It illustrates the efforts tribes made to educate members of the NGISC about the positive impacts of Indian casino gaming, and it also highlights the resistance tribes faced from the NGISC.

Identifying Opportunities To Inform And Inspire: Tribal Casino Employee Perceptions Of Tribal Self Sufficiency And Philanthropy, Sandra Sun-Ah Ponting Dr, Jess Ponting, Katherine Spilde

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

While the business case for employee engagement and satisfaction is well documented in the service profit chain and the cost savings of employee retention are easily quantified, the means to achieving these related goals in the casino industry is not well known. The pathway to employee engagement and satisfaction is even less well known in the tribal government gaming industry. This paper finds that employees in casinos that are owned by tribal governments in the United States find particular pride in sharing the tribal government’s self-sufficiency, community engagement, and philanthropic activities with casino guests, who often wonder “where the money …

How The Great Recession Affected Casino Staffing In Nevada Casinos, Toni Repetti

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

In service based industries, as revenue increases so does the need for employees to provide that service, but no known academic research has been conducted on what the most efficient level of that service should be for casinos. In Nevada casinos, significant results show that for each 1% increase in gaming revenue, casino employees increase 0.80%, salaries and wages increase 0.91%, and total payroll increases 0.95%. During fiscal years 2008 – 2010, what many consider the most significant recession to date for Nevada casinos, gaming divisions significantly decreased employees 11.6%, salaries and wages 8.7%, and total payroll 8.8% beyond that …

An Enchanting Witchcraft: Masculinity, Melancholy, And The Pathology Of Gaming In Early Modern London, Celeste Chamberland

Occasional Papers

In seeking to illuminate the ways in which inchoate models of addiction emerged alongside the unprecedented popularity of gambling in Stuart London, this paper will explore the intersections between a rudimentary pathology of addiction and transformations in the epistemology of reason, the passions, and humoral psychology in the seventeenth century. By exploring the connections between endogenous and exogenous categories of mental illness, this study will examine the ways in which medicine, social expectations, and religion intersected in the seventeenth century alongside the historical relationship between evolving concepts of mental illness, stigma and the politics of blame and responsibility in the …

Play The Cards, Roll The Dice – The Integration Of Casinos Within Asian Tourism Destination Development Strategy, Glenn Mccartney

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

New Asian casino destinations continue to emerge and expand their gambling options. The historical rhetoric of being a panacea to economic and tourism woes continues to dominant decades later. Yet the excessive regulatory environments and taxation regimes by authorities on the casino industry are unlike those applied to other destination tourism products. Once the domain of the United States in the 1990s with entertainment capitals such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City, the proliferation of legalised casino gaming is now accentuated in Asia in destinations such as Macao, Korea, Singapore and the Philippines. As a tourism product, this article highlights …

Comparing Loyalty Program Tiering Strategies: An Investigation From The Gaming Industry, Myongjee Yoo, Ashok K. Singh

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Loyalty programs are popular marketing strategies developed for the purpose of attracting, maintaining, and enhancing customer relationships. Due to the explosive worldwide growth of, and increased competition within, the casino industry has compelled contemporary casino marketers to rely more heavily on loyalty programs to increase guest allegiance and the frequency of repeat visits from their customers. Despite the widespread usage of loyalty programs across various gaming businesses in Las Vegas, its effectiveness has not quite been validated. The purpose of this study is to examine customers’ behavioral loyalty within the Las Vegas gaming industry and examine the effectiveness of a …

Conjoining The Concepts Of Visitor Attitude And Place Image To Better Understand Casino Patrons' Behavioral Intentions, Suosheng Wang

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

The importance of visitor attitude and place image in understanding individual’s visit behavioral intention has both been emphasized in tourism literature. However, the two concepts seem to have been amalgamated; their distinctive and interactive roles are rarely discussed. To fill this gap, this study investigated visitor attitude from two different aspects in the context of casino gaming – one’s generic attitude versus specific attitude. A conjoined conceptual model based on the theories of planned behavior and place image is developed and empirically tested in the context of casinos in Central Indiana. The results indicate that ‘generic attitude,’ ‘specific attitude’ and …

Research On Problem Gambling Websites, Chang Boon Patrick Lee

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

This is a continuation of a series of studies on problem gambling websites. It has been noted in prior studies that one avenue problem gamblers might look for help was to go online to perform a web search. Online help is practical as help can be located immediately and this can help to ease the gamblers’ concerns that they are left alone to handle their own problems. While there are some anecdotal evidences regarding the success of problem gambling websites, there have been few empirical studies that relate directly to the perceptions and usefulness of the websites for the problem …

Regulatory Barriers In The Field Of Gambling: How Much Virtuality Can A Bet Take?, Peter Naessens Mr.

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Bets are a special type of game of chance. In a certain sense, you could think of all games of chance as a bet (bet that the roulette ball comes to rest in number 7, betting on the correct result in the lottery etc.), but most countries have implemented a categorisation. A categorisation that is not only under pressure online, but just as much in the real world with the introduction of virtual bets.

In Belgium, virtual bets were accepted because bets are highly dependent on events, and players also like to make a bet when no events are taking …

An Empirical Evaluation Of The Clubsnsw (Australia) Multi-Venue Self-Exclusion Program, Dylan A. Pickering, Alexander Blaszczynski, Sally Gainsbury, Rowan Cameron

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Few empirical studies have evaluated the effectiveness of self-exclusion programs. Research is required to identify factors contributing to decisions to enter and/or breach self-exclusion orders, or to self-excluded gamblers to seek additional treatment. Clinical characteristics of self-excluders remain relatively unknown in addition to factors that differentiate gamblers who do or do not breach. Limitations of current programs are that gamblers can self-exclude from only one or a limited number of venues. The Multi-venue Self-exclusion program, developed and implemented by ClubsNSW (Australia), is a centralised web-based system designed to help problem gamblers self exclude from up to 35 venues at a …

Mandatory Pre-Commitment Loss Limits: Six Years’ Experience Shows It Works, Bjorn H. Hoffmann

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

The Norwegian state owned company Norsk Tipping is a pioneer in the gambling indusrty with its secure player identification and mandatory registered play across all channels. Knowing who your player is and having a strong link between the player and his consumption of games across all channels (land based, EGM, web and mobile) is an important premise for having a credible responsible gaming platform.

Norsk Tipping introduced in 2009 EGM’s with both pre commitment tools and maximum loss limits. In 2014 we introduced our Internet casino with probably the best responsible gambling platform in the world, including mandatory loss limits. …