Interviews
In this section we feature in-depth interviews with professionals from within the casino and hospitality industry, bringing you unique insight into the lives of real casino career professionals.
Interview With Rich Marino
Director of Slot Operations at the Luxor, Las VegasBy Steve Bourie
Source: About.com
Bourie: What goes into your decisions when you lay out the slot floor and are deciding where to put slot machines?
Marino: Traffic flow is the most important consideration when laying out a slot floor. Placing lower denomination machines in high traffic flow areas to insure that the property always looks busy. Also, I place the more popular machines in slower areas to draw people to those locations. I look for what types of machines people are playing and I also run reports continually: which locations are doing best, my top 10 machines, my types of machines, etc.
Bourie: How about your decisions concerning the physical layout and where you want to place the machines?
Marino: What I try to do initially is create excitement by the front entrance of the casino so when a customer walks in they see people playing and having fun. I put popular nickel games up front because it seems the nickel games always fill up first. (Pulls out floor plan of the casino and points to various locations). As you can see I've located a couple of nickel banks up front and some Wheel of Fortune games next to them.
I try to draw the customers in and create a good flow through the casino. This is the entrance (pointing to a different area of the layout) from the Excalibur when you come over from the moving walkway that links the two properties. Here, I try to create the same scenario by putting Wheel of Fortunes on this wall and the Williams games adjacent to them. And, like I said, I try to create excitement in each area and I do that with the types of machines or denominations. The nickel games kind of shield the front areas and we also put them in the back areas because customers are going to find them there. They're going to find them no matter where you put them because they like playing nickel machines.
More Interviews:
Interview With Ken Lambert Jr.
Cardroom Manager at Jack Binions's Horseshoe
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