Wireless service devices coming to casinos

Kevin Ferguson

Friday, Oct. 19, 2001 | 10:05 a.m.

Vacationers lounging poolside at a resort often think the margarita they just ordered can't come soon enough.

With that in mind, technology entrepreneurs say arming cocktail waitresses with wireless devices can expedite drink orders.

This type of mobile innovation is being used at a professional sports arena in Dallas, while some casinos have tapped into the technology with wireless terminals for better managing slot floors and placing drink orders, a panel of experts said at a Las Vegas gambling industry convention this week.

Aside from improving customer service, orders taken from mobile devices or wireless terminals will stimulate a higher volume of business for the resort, said InfoGenesis' Vice President Brad Bennett, whose Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company provides POS, or Point-Of-Sale, terminals to the hospitality industry.

Bennett said cocktail waitresses can dial in orders from terminals throughout the pool deck and have the drinks waiting for them while they make their way back to the bar.

InfoGenesis' wireless terminals are being used at Bally's and the Four Seasons in Las Vegas. At the American Airlines Center, the sports arena where the Dallas Mavericks play basketball games, drink servers carry InfoGenesis mobile devices.

Bennett also said the wireless POS system can help improve efficiency for food and drink service in banquets and on cruise ships. While people sit at their banquet table, they can order a specific bottle of wine on a wireless device and have it brought out promptly rather than waiting for a waiter or waitress to take their order, he said.

"If you can get one more bottle of wine out per table (because of this speed of ordering) at a cruise banquet, it could cover the expense of the technology within the first three nights of the cruise," Bennett said.

Installing a central "access point" for the communication between wireless devices typically costs about $1,000, said Matt Linderman, president of Tech Innovations of Las Vegas.

Each wireless device ranges in cost between $700 to $1,500, depending on various added features, such as printer-option capabilities, Bennett said.

Tech Innovations has installed the wireless terminals at the Atlantis Casino Resort in Reno and at Horsehoe casinos in Tunica, Miss., Hammond, Ind., and Bossier City, La.

A single access point could cover the area of a restaurant, while a 100,000-square-foot casino floor may need two or three access points, Linderman said.

Slot floor managers at the Horseshoe and Atlantis casinos are using these devices to quickly research data on patrons they recognize as frequent guests so the managers can have conversational information at their fingertips.

This requires the use of digital cameras with facial recognition technology to identify patrons and pull up their data. If the customer is a club card member at that casino, much of the player's gambling habits will be stored in the casino's database.

"If a manager recognizes me and knows I was last in (the casino) in late July and played dollar slots and ate at the steakhouse, he would walk up and say, ' 'Wow! Matt, I haven't seen you... here since last July. It looks like you are playing pretty well so far. Why don't you have a steak dinner on us tonight?" he said.

The mobility of these wireless terminals allows casino managers to easily move them to busier areas of the slot floor as traffic patterns change.

Critics of wireless technology have said data being transfered from mobile devices through the air is not secure. Linderman and Bennett, however, said their clients have not had any problems with broken encryption.

As the technology improves and devices get cheaper and more durable, this will be the wave of the future in the hotel industry, said Pearl Brewer, chairwoman of the hotel management department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"I think this (technology) will become commonplace in casinos by 2002 or 2003," she said.