Stratosphere slot club growing

Wednesday, March 7, 2001 | 10:29 a.m.

The Stratosphere hotel-casino said it added 63,314 names to its slot club program in the past eight months, thanks to a new cash back promotional program.

On the heels of this success, Stratosphere officials say they're looking for new ways to link the north Strip property with the three other casinos owned by financier Carl Icahn -- including the possibility of a single, unified slot player's card.

The chunk of new slot club customers represents a 67 percent increase since June 21. Stratosphere officials attributed the gain to the casino's "Players Club Guaranteed Winners" program, which covers new player's slot losses up to $125, then pays the customer an additional 10 percent.

The program isn't available to locals, and probably won't be any time in the future, said Ron Aller, vice president of casino marketing at the Stratosphere. That's because locals are now given comps equal to 30 percent of their theoretical losses, which is the highest level of comps offered to visitors -- and it wouldn't be economical to offer a guaranteed winner program on top of that, Aller said.

"We're talking about the (slot club) program, about making some chances to make it more advantageous to local customers," Aller said. "If and when we do it, we'd do it at all three properties (the Stratosphere and two Arizona Charlie's properties). We want to make sure we're competitive with the rest of the local operators."

The biggest step in that direction would be a single card that could be used at all Icahn-owned properties, including the Sands in Atlantic City.

"We're actively looking at that right now," Aller said. "We're doing it with processes such as purchasing and human resources. But as far as player cards go, we've got a couple of different software systems out there. That's a great expense, but we're looking at that. I would be very surprised if it happened in 2001."