Harrah’s CEO Phil Satre recognized back in 1988 that this might not be the way to go in the future. Each had its own player card that was valid only at the casino that issued it, and none of the information systems at these individual sites were integrated with those at other casinos or could even communicate with them. It operated under the assumption that its customers were partial to one particular casino, and its casinos around the country each operated independently and competed with one another. We stimulate demand by knowing our customers.”īefore the development of WINet, Harrah’s was just like any other casino company. “That drove the $2 billion investment at the Bellagio,” Loveman says.

The prevailing wisdom in the industry is that it’s the property’s attractiveness that drives customers to one site or another, says Gary Loveman, Harrah’s COO-a view that has propelled the spending of ever-greater amounts on evermore lavish hotels and casinos to keep customers coming through their revolving glass doors and parked at their slot machines.

It has been a complete break with tradition. “They changed their relationship with their customers, set themselves apart in their industry and created enterprise value,” says Gregor Bailar, CIO and senior vice president of the National Association of Securities Dealers, and a 2001 Enterprise Value Awards judge. It’s the key to Harrah’s Total Rewards program, a groundbreaking CRM strategy. Now Harrah’s can boast of having the only integrated, coast-to-coast system that allows real-time communication between all of its properties it can inform a site in Nevada exactly how a visitor from New Jersey likes to gamble, eat and spend. Harrah’s, on the other hand, chose to put most of its money into the winner’s information network (WINet), the industry’s first national customer database.

Of the newest hotels on the Strip, Las Vegas Sands’s Venetian Hotel cost $3 billion to build and MGM’s Bellagio came in at $1.8 billion. The difference is that most companies put money into the spectacle.

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