Casinos ready to 'get real'

This week, Northeast Pennsylvania's casinos get real. With the addition of poker, roulette, craps, blackjack, mini baccarat and other table games at a cost of about $35 million at teach venue, Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs and Mount Airy casino Resort officially transform more into the kind of full-service casinos found in Atlantic City or Las Vegas.

"So here we are," said George Toth, Mount Airy's president and chief executive officer, as he showed off a poker room last week.

Without table games, Mount Airy could not survive, he said. "You have to have the full complement of games. There's a lot of competition, especially on the east coast. Connecticut has tables, Delaware has tables, Jersey has tables. So to be a player in that arena, you have to have tables," Toth said. "The people just can't wait to have tables in here. I think everybody is enthused, ready and just waiting."

Mohegan Sun president and CEO Robert Soper echoes the sentiment. "The team here is real excited to launch table games," Soper said.

Today, Mohegan Sun, Mount Airy and Hollywood Casino at Penn National Racecourse near Harrisburg will test their table games with the proceeds going to charity. A week from today, they open for real, joining a highly competitive business.

Mount Airy will start with 68 table games, which are adding almost 500 full- and part-time jobs and increasing the payroll to more than 1,200 employees. Mohegan Sun will add 82 table games and more than 500 employees, giving it a payroll of more than 1,500.

Each has a strategy for competing against other casinos with Mount Airy perhaps a little more aggressive out of necessity. Fewer people live immediately near Mount Airy than Mohegan Sun, which means Mount Airy always has to work harder to attract gamblers. That includes a more serious effort to recruit table games players, Toth said.

For example, through June 27, Mount Airy's fiscal year-to-date gross terminal revenues - all the money took in - was $144.5 million. For Mohegan Sun, it was $221.1 million for Mohegan. Both have about the same number of slot machines.

Table games typically make up 20 to 25 percent of a casino's take, Toth said. He said Mount Airy, which draws heavily from New York City and northern New Jersey, will aim to attract table game players by expanding its hotel, attracting another hotel nearby, building a covered swimming pool and tennis courts and marketing amenities no other casino can offer.

No Atlantic City casino has a golf course just outside its front door, Toth said, but also the "whole Poconos experience is unique." Besides golf, visitors can enjoy canoeing, fishing, swimming and other entertainment at nearby venues.

"That experience in itself kind of sets this area apart," he said. "I just think that we are a destination resort, pretty much the same model as Atlantic City. People have to travel to get there. There's really not a local population in Atlantic City, there's not a local population here. So people are going there for a reason, and they come here for a reason."

Because of the need to travel, Mount Airy advertises heavily in New York and New Jersey. It welcomes and will have games for casual table games players, but it is going hard after the lucrative Asian-American community, hiring four Asian-Americans as "executive hosts" to seeking out "high rollers" in that community.

"How you go after the high rollers, it's a different ball game," Toth said.

Across the country, there are players for whom table games are "their number one avocation," Toth said. Casinos hire hosts to find and develop relationships with those players.

"And they (the hosts) will know a broad spectrum of these players so they'll call them and they'll invite them in and they'll meet them and have dinner with them and socialize with them and that's how it's done," he said.

Because these players bet in large amounts and play for long periods of time, casinos often offer them free rooms, food, beverages, perhaps some cash and other incentives to visit and play.

"I think they're extremely important. Because these are players, they're going to play in a number of casinos both on the east and west coast," Toth said. "They enjoy and they play for hours and hours. And that's what we need. We need time. Time is the element that we win on. We don't win on short play. We win on time."

Casinos bend over backwards to attract high rollers. Hosts often travel to where the high rollers live to court them. The hosts learn their likes and dislikes, their birthdays, anniversaries, what they like to drink and eat, whether they play golf, their favorite entertainers. Toth said he's willing to book specific singers and other performers to cater to a high roller.

Vincent Jordan, Mount Airy's vice president of player development, is in charge of attracting high rollers, in charge of finding the right touch for them.

"That could be setting up a private game for them. It could be knowing it's their (birthday) or their significant other's (birthday) and going up and decorating the rooms, having balloons or having the cake, having a little gift there, just having the right touches there to make their experiences enjoyable."

Even a masseuse.

"I'm certain we will get requests for people who are in a game, they'll want to have someone come down and give them a massage whilethey're in the game," he said.

Soper said Mohegan Sun will also have 12 to 15 hosts, but will concentrate on its normal market, which is within a radius of 50 to 60 miles.

"It's going to be a mix of players and mix of betting limits. We do think there is an opportunity to capture some higher-end customers," he said. "Most of our players, even at the high end will be from our primary markets. This is a convenience market. A good percentage of our database resides within 60 miles of our property. We don't draw as much from New Jersey or even New York, but we do draw from various population pockets outside the state as well."

With the coming of table games, Mount Airy is planning to add 200 hotel rooms and attract a third-party developer to build a new hotel nearby with 200 to 400 more rooms. Mohegan, which did not plan for a hotel when all it could offer is slots, is now looking at building 300-room hotel because customers asked for it.

Mohegan Sun, whose name is on the Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre Township, won't go so far as bringing in acts to attract high rollers, but it will cater to table games players in some of the typical ways.

"You clearly want to gauge the tastes of your players and you want to find out what they want. And you provide those amenities including those non-gaming amenities, whether it's food and beverage, shopping, entertainment," Soper said.