For years now, casinos have embraced and iterated upon the revenue management playbooks pioneered by hotels and airlines. They optimize rooms, drive RevPAR, layer in play-based comps, and design tiered direct marketing offers to inspire incremental trips. But what if casinos reimagined how they design, package, and comp tailored experiences, essentially borrowing from the Attribute-Based Selling (ABS) revolution that’s happening in hotels and in airplanes?
What is ABS?
Distilled to its simplest form, ABS offers flexible, attribute-driven choices to guests. What does this mean? Guests can select what they actually care about and pay for those things accordingly. Examples include a balcony, a great view, a high floor, a late checkout, an early check-in, or even the guarantee of a specific room number. Sky’s the limit, really.
McKinsey & Company has called ABS a “new paradigm,” noting that it enables hyper-personalized offers, clearer value communication, and ultimately better conversion rates.
That’s all well and good, but McKinsey is just a think tank. What does the hotel industry think about it?
It turns out that hotel industry platforms are echoing McKinsey’s sentiments. A common discussion topic among hotel innovators involves ABS allowing hotels to treat every feature as inventory, which then allows them to create more upsell opportunities centered on actual guest affinities and not just on available upgrades. Essentially, ABS lends itself to more guest-centric models.
Why this Makes Sense for Casinos
While ABS has been a hot topic in non-gaming hotel circles for a couple years now, casinos arguably have even more to gain and therefore should start thinking about ways to incorporate it, such as:
- Perishable Experiences Beyond Rooms: Show tickets, spa services, restaurant reservations, cabanas, tee times, and even private tables in high limit salons are all constrained, “perishable” inventories that can be carved out into attributes.
- Comping Precision: Instead of the same, almost generic comps that have been offered for decades, all based on ADT cohorts or bands, imagine something like Attribute-Based Comping (ABC) through which player development teams can comp exactly what aligns with how much a player is worth and what their affinities are. Say, a specific room or maybe even backstage access at a concert.
Sure, VIPs and VVIPs already get what they want, but the difference is ABC can make that process measurable, forecastable, scalable, and profitable while transforming a cost center into a managed reinvestment strategy. It also extends monetizable personalization beyond extremely high-value guests.
Today, two VIPs with the same ADT or ADW may get very different treatment depending on their host’s discretion or on a restaurant manager’s mood. That kind of inconsistency can erode both margin and loyalty, while also potentially setting casinos up to dissatisfy players in the future because unstandardized, and therefore potentially unrepeatable, concessions were made which set precedence.
- Player Empowerment: Casinos already know that today’s players crave control and personalization because players have it elsewhere when they interact with the non-casino businesses in their lives. So why not give them the same kind of control in casinos?
- Revenue and Margin Protection: By assigning real, quantifiable value to attributes, casinos can more transparently balance comps with paid features. High-value players may get attributes comped all the time, which makes sense, but with ABC others can opt-in to buy them. This can protect margin and yield more data with which profitability can be further optimized.
Casinos sell, yes, but they also comp. ABC uses revenue management logic to maximize sales but also to maximize return on comping. Comps are investments. Systemized ABC can ensure that each comp is the right investment by aligning it with player value, preferences, and margin protection.
The Obvious Hurdle (and Opportunity)
The challenge with ABC is operational complexity. Isolating attributes and pricing each one will require strong systems, clean attribute data, and dynamic pricing engines that can present the right offer at the right moment.
That’s where platforms like LUXE Pricing are already laying the groundwork. Today, LUXE’s LuxSell URS focuses on room upgrades and upsell automation, but the same logic and capabilities could be extended to casino-specific elements, like:
- A player booking a room could be automatically offered casino-block concert tickets at a special rate when other players who were eligible for comp tickets don’t convert offers as expected.
- Host teams could leverage ABC logic to offer precise, value-based comps that dynamically avail themselves or evolve based on real-time offer conversions, floor occupancies, or no-shows to drive share of wallet when share of trips might be under forecasted levels… all while aligning with a player’s in-trip gaming spend.
Where to Start
For casinos that want to explore this concept, three potential pilot areas stand out:
- Entertainment: Concerts, nightclub residencies, and non-concert shows where seating attributes can be priced or comped with precision.
- F&B: High-demand times, lounge or speakeasy access, or special menus as curated attributes.
- Resort Amenities: Spa, salon, golf, cabanas, and pool seats are all attributes that can be deliberately monetized or comped in a strategic manner, and not just based on availability.
Closing Thought
Rooms were first in terms of revenue optimization in hotels and casinos. But for casinos, attributes outside of the rooms offer significant upside. At Luxe Pricing we are on the cutting edge of add ons. Not only does HouseCount yield live entertainment today, we also have numerous casinos offering add-ons through LuxSell URS just like we described today.
By adapting ABC, casinos can deliver experiences that feel hyper-personalized while protecting margins and sharpening ROI. The systems to power this are emerging, and those who pilot early will define the future of total revenue management in gaming.
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