Dennis Andreaci: Impatience for normality

Friday 18th of December 2020

Very surprisingly, some very well managed small and mid-sized casinos have been able to focus on their local premium guests along with very reduced staffing and other costs (because most of the tables are closed and not needed). This small group of players has helped the casinos function as a business reasonably well.

What I've seen recently is that the public does have a lot of pent-up demand for doing things like traveling and I suspect that will be for casinos as well.

If you asked me this six months ago, I would have said I think people will be slow to re-adopt crowded activities. It looks like many people are growing impatient and are more willing to get back to what they like to do.

So the key thing to look at is how fast the public is ready to return to their leisure activities.

I suspect we will see stages of surging. From almost no guests to a very quick jump in core players coming back quickly. Then the next stage might come some months later as we see a surge in general tourism.

There is nothing that can hold back the real premium and regular players once they are allowed back in easily. We see some of this already in Asia when and where restrictions are eased.

I think that a well-managed casino should have a lot of marketing programs ready to fire up at any time so they could get a jump on the competition as they see the players considering coming back. I would like to be in front of that and take future market share from my competitors.