This is not good news for our casino by any means. It may be that the only time those tables are actually bringing in money is the weekends, but what now? When the casino gets busy on a weekend, the players aren’t going to find the games they have become used to having for the past ten years. Many players are majority table game addicts who drop a little here and there on slots. We will surely lose those players now. They will drive the extra miles to go to our neighboring casino to the south in order to find action. They won’t find it here anymore, unless you call slot machines the action.
And for poker, there is a reason poker has continued its downward slope over the past few years. Sure, all northern poker rooms have experienced less numbers since Forest Lake opened, but they survive by catering to the players. They run tournaments that satisfy players rather than upper levels of management. They provide incentives that reward players for coming to their rooms. They promote and advertise their incentives and player-friendly tournaments. These are things that our casino failed miserably at. They’ve never once had a free buy-in “thank you” tournament in 10 years of play. There hasn’t been any sort of thank you to the players. These are things that other rooms are doing. We missed the boat on that. And, this isn’t the fault of the guys actually running the poker room. Every idea they come up with is ignored by upper levels of management, who have no idea what poker is. Most casinos succeed at poker (and make a lot of money off it) by putting people in charge of the room who actually know the game from a player’s perspective. Our casino hasn’t done that. Control freaks hate to give up an ounce of anything.
Let’s take a look at some other attempts by our casino manager to drive away every last local player.
Senior rewards went from playing $5 to earn $5, to having to play $50. Wasn’t it enough to bring seniors to the casino with a gift of $5? It got them in the door to play. If you’re going to make them play $50 just to earn a measly $5, why call it a reward? Where is the reward to the senior…oh, a reward for when we take your $50.
There have been many changes in the points system at the casino, and they haven’t been in the favor of the player…and players know this. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard lately from upset locals that our casino is the tightest around. Many folks will take the time to drive over to patronize one of the two neighboring casinos to the west and south.
Ever since going to a kiosk system, if you’re not a big spender, you aren’t going to win anything but $5 when you do get a swipe. The system is programmed and knows your exact playing habits, how often you come to the casino, what you spend and it has you listed in certain groups based on this play. It knows whether you’re a player who came twice last month but dropped $500, or if you’re a player who came 15 times last month and didn’t drop close to $500, because you came for the free soda and social time. Guess which player will win the $25 amount when he swipes and which one will win $5 every time. Yes, the guy who came twice will get the bigger win because they want him to come again. The frequent low player will win $5 every time because they don’t care whether he returns or not. This has taken the fun out of any of these drawings as well. It’s programmed on which players actually have a chance to win. It’s the same thing when these two players put a ticket into drawings. The drawings are all computerized now. They don’t even put the names into the drawing barrel and spin it. How lame is that. They have taken the fun out of the casino experience at LCO. And who do you think will win that drawing between these two players again? The player who dropped $500, that’s who.
Remember when you actually dropped your ticket into the barrel. When they did the drawings there would be big crowds gathered around, but now, there aren’t any crowds unless there giving away a boat. They took the fun out of it.
One of the surprising big changes coming from a former marketing director (Lee Harden) is that there is no entertainment. When was the last time we had any entertainment in the convention center? Lee says this doesn’t pay for itself. Yeah, right. Does it lose money? How can it be wrong for our casino to put itself on the map and attempt to draw in customers from other areas? That’s what entertainment does. When someone is planning their weekend casino getaway, entertainment is one of the main things they look for. It does draw in more people and many of those people will drop a few bucks in the casino.
Another thing people look for when they plan their weekend getaway is whether or not a casino has table games. I know back when my wife and I used to take many casino trips, first for blackjack, and then poker when it came along, we always planned the trip based on how many tables they had. We’d look up the casino on websites such as casinocity.com, and I would avoid any casinos with only four tables because it told me it was small and had very little action. I might have reconsidered going to that small casino if it had the right entertainment. Congratulations casino management…LCO will now have neither.
What does this mean as we enter the long and cold winter, where the tourists rarely venture out, unless they have a snowmobile? It means now that our casino manager has done his best to piss off, alienate and drive away the locals, there may be a lot of cobwebs on those slot machines this winter.
Lee brings numbers up to the tribal council that show the casino is doing fine. But, here’s the deal. He’s cut so many expenditures, most meant to draw in customers, such as giveaways and entertainment that as casino revenues fall it will still appear as nothing has changed over the past three years. The truth is the casino is bringing in much less revenues now than it did three years ago. It appears the same because our expense and overhead are much less. But, what does this mean for our casino?
Another change to come to our casino is that the manager, who is paid a six-figure salary to manage, has hired a handful of highly paid executive assistants to do the jobs that he should be doing. Here is an example of one hiring that didn’t make sense. I, for one, thought our buffet was pretty damn good. I liked the food better than other buffets nearby. One of Lee’s first actions as manager was to hire another buffet manager over the current manager at that time. Why did we need another high priced “executive chef” over the buffet manager? Why did we need an assistant like Dulcie Rae Wolfe when we already had Kim Martinson? Dulcie is an old friend of Lee’s from way back, so tell me, did we really need to create a high-priced position for her. Imagine how much all of these new positions cost us in the yearly casino budget. I suppose it made sense for Lee to do some drastic cuts of other expenses.
I’m already hearing rumors that our tribe is just about bankrupt. We went from money in the bank and loans paid off a year and a half ago, to spending ourselves back into debt again. I’ll have more on this in another blog as I’m researching this now. But, back to the casino financials, as the tribe goes further into debt, where are they going to look for rescue…the casino. As the long and cold winter begins and the tourists go home, where is the casino going to look for rescue…us locals. Where are we going to be…about an hour from here enjoying an affordable drink, playing some craps, earning points, getting ready for the concert.
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