WhiteSand Custom Book - (Page 11) Partners in Progress City ‘rejecters’ STRATEGY “Bob wanted to bring a taste of Las Vegas to Atlantic City. But it wasn’t as simple as just transplanting a Las Vegas casino to the Boardwalk,” said WhiteSand Managing Director Saverio R. Scheri III. Bougher would remark to Scheri, “There are people on a Friday night who live in Philadelphia and New York who say, ‘Hey, what do you want to do tonight?’ And Atlantic City never comes up as one of the possibilities. “They’ll drive two hours to do something fun, but they won’t drive two hours to go to Atlantic City, because there’s nothing to offer them in terms of an experience worth jumping into a car and driving two hours for. That’s a big, untapped market.” WhiteSand Consulting was hired to help implement Boughner’s vision throughout the property, including building a pre-opening database of visitors that fit the profile Boughner, Boyd Gaming and MGM Mirage was hoping to capture. When the resort opened its doors, thousands of “Atlantic City rejecters” strolled through the porte cochere of the new resort, many already enrolled in Borgata’s player club. “The fact there were thousands of people in their customer database before they opened their doors was important,” Scheri said. A history of success hiteSand has assisted more than 40 tribal governments and commercial casino operating companies with strategic campaigns, research and marketing to create and grow brand identities. WhiteSand strategic marketing is done in conjunction with the opening of new properties, such as Bogata, Wynn Las Vegas, Foxwoods Resort & Casino, Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs and others. But WhiteSand also applies its expertise for tribal and commercial casinos seeking to expand or change their customer profile. WhiteSand temporarily took over operations at the Morongo Casino Resort & Spa, which hoped to attract more upscale customers. The firm recently assigned Richard Cohn, a research specialist, to help a tribal casino resort come up with designs for cottages for its high rollers. And WhiteSand assisted Sandia Resort & Casino north of Albuquerque, N.M. better utilize its Konami gaming system to get the full potential of the system’s player tracking and slot accounting capabilities. “ “I want the Atlantic City rejecters.” — Bob Boughner, Borgata president and CEO “There’s people, we believe, who aren’t coming Bob to Atlantic City who are Boughner going to come here and find their home in Borgata.’” — Sid Vaikunta, director of marketing “I’m very impressed. They’ve raised the bar so high that the other Atlantic City casinos will have to do more to compete, and that spells success for the whole city.” — Craig Callaway, Atlantic City councilman “We always said that we didn’t want to build a 2003-compliant version of what the city already has. The intention is to make this a very upscale, very international, high-energy spa. Our market research tells us that this is what customers want, and this is what will get people to come here who normally don’t come to Atlantic City. This is not just another casino, it’s a destination resort.” — Peter Finamore, vice president, hospitality W WhiteSand at Borgata ✔ Conducted marketing research targeting younger, hipper gamblers. ✔ Developed preopening promotions to compile customer database ✔ Accumulated pre-opening database of several thousand customers Building the Borgata hiteSand was on the ground, assisting Boyd Gaming in the opening of Borgata nearly two years before the resort opened W 11
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