Mandalay Bay, Conn. casino in deal for marketing

Friday, Aug. 29, 2003 | 10:54 a.m.

Mandalay Resort Group's Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas has developed a marketing partnership with the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut to attract customers to each other's properties.

Under the partnership, Mandalay Bay will send marketing pitches to customers living within 350 miles of Mohegan Sun. That would include Eastern cities such as Boston, Hartford, Providence, Philadelphia and New York.

Likewise, Mohegan Sun will send its customers offers to visit Mandalay Bay.

The offers include complementary rooms and room discounts.

Mohegan Sun customers already have visited Mandalay Bay under the program, which began a few weeks ago, Mandalay Resort Group's marketing chief John Marz said.

"We think it's a win-win for their casino and ours and for their players and ours," Marz said.

Mohegan Sun approached Mandalay Resort Group with the idea, he said. The tribal property is a good fit for Mandalay Bay because the properties mirror each other in amenities and quality, he said. The properties also similarly segment their customer database, allowing both casinos to pitch customers with comparable offers, he said.

Like many properties, both casinos "rate" gamblers based on how much they spend at their casinos and offer discounts and other perks to attract loyal customers.

Many Mandalay Resort Group customers travel to Las Vegas from the New York-New Jersey corridor, the company's third most important customer market, Marz said.

The company doesn't anticipate similar partnerships with other casinos in that northeast region, though it may extend the concept elsewhere, he said.

"This just started with us, so we'll see where this goes," he said.

More marketing partnerships between Las Vegas and out-of-state casinos are on the horizon, said Max Rubin, a marketing consultant for the Barona Valley Ranch Resort & Casino near San Diego.

In April, Station Casinos Inc. became the first Las Vegas casino giant to develop a far-reaching marketing partnership with a tribal casino.

The agreement involved identifying top gamblers at Station Casinos' Sunset Station and Barona and sending them on a free weekend trip to the other property.

"This is the absolute way of the future," Rubin said. "There's no harm in doing these sort of things" because people who visit out-of-state properties "still come to Las Vegas," he said.

That was the thinking behind the Mandalay partnership, Mohegan Sun Senior Vice President of Marketing Michael Bloom said.

"East Coast gaming customers once or twice a year enjoy going out west to Las Vegas, truly the mecca of gaming," Bloom said.

Mandalay Resort Group is one of a few major gaming companies that lacks an East Coast presence, meaning that it doesn't directly compete with Mohegan Sun, he added. Competitors Park Place Entertainment Corp., Harrah's Entertainment Inc., MGM MIRAGE, Aztar Corp., Stratosphere Corp. and Boyd Gaming Corp. all have big operations in Atlantic City.

Separately, Mandalay Resort Group has recently implemented a software system that will help the company reward non-gamblers with special offers.

Casinos typically offer complementaries and perks to gamblers based on play tracked by player loyalty programs.

The software system allows the company to track a variety of transactions, from hotel rooms to entertainment purchases, Marz said. That way, the company can also reward customers who spend money in other areas of the resort, he said.

"There are many people who come to Las Vegas who don't gamble very much," he said. "We want to identify these people and send them offers that are appealing to them."

In 2001, Mandalay Resort Group purchased a software system from a Silicon Valley company that aimed to centralize customer information from 16 Mandalay Resort Group properties.

The system allows the company to create and adjust marketing campaigns based on real-time customer information and to offer pitches at the point of sale.