CET Laurel Lounge limited to 1 visit/day for Diamond Plus?

I think it’s great using the lounges when friends come to town so we can have some different shots and unique drinks for no cost. They love it! I’ve also taken two or three people with me and they’ve never charge me the extra $10 fee. So that’s been nice. Going in to grab a drink or two before I go to a show if I’m not planning on gambling is perfect. Caesars is typically very crowded during the hot food times but I haven’t really noticed any of the rest being overcrowded this year.

 

New Orleans lounge, im in it all the time, whenin Vegas, I rarely ever go to the lounges. If I do, ts because someone wanted to go so ill either bring them or tag along. I get better drinks at my friends bar, lol

 

When they made the first variations to 25,000 and $10 for 15-25, my host indicated this was a result of the 'locals' at the regional casinos but the changes were being made system wide for consistency. At places like Council Bluffs, Joliet, Kansas City etc., the locals would play at CET until the point in the year that they made Diamond, then they were dining every night in the Diamond lounge but they stopped playing there. They would still come to dine at the DL every night, then go to play at the other local casino(s) to also reach a desired level with that casino and take advantage of their offerings for the status they would then gain there. When they started the next year they still had Diamond and the whole cycle would start again. There were known locals that ate supper nearly 365 days a year in the DL. Offerings in regional DL's for food are not snacks but items you can do a full meal with - CB has a small salad bar, soup, deserts and some type of a main such as burgers, tacos etc. as well as drinks (at least last time I was there). Easily close to a $20 meal for a couple every night if you were dining out without ever factoring in alcoholic beverages. Likely a few cookies and bars went into the purse in a napkin to take care of breakfast the next day also lol.

 

Yes that makes sense. But when we went to Arizona they only allow a ticket for one drink and one appetizer max. No buffet. That seemed a bit extreme. At least give us free drinks. We were staying in the hotel as well.

 

I understand that is the behavior that killed the Gold Lounge at Venetian/Palazzo.

 

That makes perfect sense. We see similar when we go to Atlantic City. Especially when we stay during the week. We see alot of folks that clearly just came from work (scrubs, suits and ties, etc) sit down, have a meal and a drink and then head home. The food in AC is very good and the drinks are very good too. The Caesars Laurel Lounge is right next to one of my favorite banks of video poker machines so I prefer to go into the lounge, grab a drink or two, then go play for 45 minutes or so and then go back in and do it again. The drinks are better and I can also grab a quick snack too. In AC there doesn't seem to be a limit on how many times we can enter in a day. In the past we have entered all 3 lounges inside of an hour just to see what our meal options were and then went back to the one we liked most.

 

Yes, I just went to AC over the weekend and I earned over 30,000 tier with the bonuses. I know most people can't do that but Diamond is easy with all the multipliers and bonuses, it's too easy. That IS why they're getting cheap. I know there are people in AC that spend loads of time in the lounges.

 

Yeah, I earned Diamond in two trips this year for a $1,976 dollar loss. In return, I got ~$400 in comped meals, 6 free nights, and all the booze in the world. They're barely making money off people chasing Diamond.

 

It's the locals that "donate" thousands, if not tens of thousands per year to the casinos. And when the next financial crisis hits, it is the locals who will keep Vegas afloat through the bad weather, not the tourists or the "whales". Diamond lounge access does not cost Caesars a dime, they just bring in some ordinary food from the buffet and the leftovers are then used to feed pigs. The "free" alcohol that they give out serves as an incentive for people to play and bet more.

 

Could not agree more except it's millions not thousands.

 

I meant per head, so you are right, in total there are millions that Vegas casinos make from all the locals.

 

When I went to the Paris laurel lounge a few months ago for the first time at a vegas laurel lounge, the food offered there was disappointing

 

I want to clarify on my post. I was talking about Atlantic City. The lounges in Vegas are very disappointing. The Lounges in Vegas are not as good as AC.

 

Agree that most of the LV lounges aren't that appealing. I visited the Caesars Palace lounge once last year and had a long wait at the door. Once inside there was a large food line with little seating, felt a bit like some sort of institutional cafeteria line...
I just don't see limiting to one visit per day as saving much.
I could see limiting to only the same guest for the whole day.

 

I haven't been to AC, but if that's the case, their first "cuts" should be to make all the lounges more in line with each other instead of limiting daily access to them.

 

I respectfully disagree with @mikel123

Since you've never been to AC lounges, how can you judge them?

Seven Stars are free for 3pp. Diamonds above 25K are free for 1pp, below 25K charge is $10 comp dollars per person. Additional guests are $25 comp dollars each.

1)The lounges in AC are much more "elegant"
2)The lounges in AC serve a full buffet and that's why they charge the <25,000 TC people
3)They have 7* lounges in AC, which are even more exclusive in their offerings

It's a different business model, and IMHO, justified in their different treatment. I believe that there are fewer "locals" that use the AC lounges.

 

To be clear, I'm not in any way advocating that they actually make any cuts. Also, I'm not judging any lounges - from what I hear the AC lounges are among the best offered. I'm saying that it makes more sense to make the lounges more "equal" in quality instead of limiting access to once per day across all properties. I think limiting access will, as others have pointed out in this thread, result in people spending more time in the lounge than on the gaming floor - which is where CET wants them.

 

I think size of lounge and quantity of guests also has a lot to do with the quality of the lounge. Atlantic City "needs" to offer the "bigger" players more of an incentive to stay on property. In fact most of the big resorts have a very high quality upper tier lounge, some like Ocean have two. I don't think they need to make the lounges equal in any way. And I think doing so is a bad business decision across the board. Treating Ballys AC like it's Ballys LV is inevitably going to hurt both properties. Size of the lounge and percentage of diamond players that use the property should be the defining factors. Small lounge, lots of diamonds limit access. Big lounges not a ton of players unlimited in and out.

CET charging for entries below 25k makes the most sense across the board. This means that even in tier matching you are making them money if you end up using a lounge (earned at least 1000 RC)

I am going to make this definitive statement and then show 2 examples. The tier matching program, bonuses, multipliers and everything that CET does to get more Diamond members does not ever result in an actual loss to the company as a whole, and even rarely on a per person basis. While the margin on some of these people may be small, the volume is where profit ensues.

@spdandpwr I would venture two guesses about your ~2k loss.

1. Your ADT was likely higher than that number so you got lucky (even the most efficient way of getting Diamond which is a 5k day plus bonus plus a 3 x multiplier on decent VP with about a 4% hold amounts to a 2k loss) Anything other than that and your theoretical loss was higher. Even 4 2500 point days on slots leads to a 5k loss. Also if any points were earned from spend (which the quest and other things require) that's hard cash outlayed.

2. Even with the comped food, rooms booze they still likely made close to a thousand dollars off you. Remember, our value and their hard cost are dramatically different. A well run restaurant should have a 40% profit margin on food to your 400 becomes 240 in actual food and labor costs. Also depending on where you are and the true mark-up it could be even less in actual cost. The hard cost on the room is cleaning / supplies (assuming there is at least one other empty room in the property they can sell) so being generous its 15$ per night which is about 90 dollars. Drink wise. If you figure there are about 25 comp drinks in a 750 ML bottle (the likelihood of a full 1.5 ounce shot in a floor drink is slim) and the wholesale cost on a bottle of grey goose or titos is even $50 (it's not) that mean your per drink cost to the casino is probably 2-2.50 including labor cost, cup cost etc. That would mean, they would have to serve you about 700 top shelf cocktails before they start losing money.

Figure a more reasonable number of 48 cocktails per day ( 2 per hour every hour) and you figure 288 free drinks. Round that to 300 just for numbers sake.

That means even you getting lucky and being below your theoretical loss, they still made close to 1k off of you. If CET has 100k Diamond members ( I suspect it's much higher than that) who did what you did that's a profit of 100 million


On the other side of things assume you have no status and have never given CET one dollar in play or purchase ever in your lifetime. You travel a ton through Wyndham at work and have earned Diamond which you tier match, you go to vegas for work and someone explains to you how to tier match and that you can collect a free meal out of this which is really the only actual perk if you're not staying on property. Assuming you go straight in get your card straight to the restaurant and spend exactly 100 dollars on your meal and walk right back out, you have cost the casino no more than $65. This is the only instance a diamond match costs CET money, and the value of the partnership likely offsets this. Likewise partnerships with Founders Card have an actual financial incentive to the Casino. The number of people who would make use only of the 100 dollar dinner and give not one other penny are the potential risk.

However, if you are in the diamond lounge, somehow some way Caesars has made money off of you. If you are getting in for free you still had to earn a full 25k points somehow (tier match doesn't start you at 15k) if you're paying 1000 RC, you have earned them somehow, either through partnerships, Visa, spend, or play. All of those things make money.

These programs have lasted far too long in an era where comps are being widely cut. There is no way they would keep it all in effect if it wasn't a net gain overall.

 

It’s always seemed a bit strange to me that the AC lounges are so much better, food wise, than the Vegas lounges. I’d expect it to be the other way around.
I would think AC has a much higher percentage of locals, who (even if they are not doing what jgates8 described) will make diamond by playing many days with a much lower average play per visit. Whereas Vegas has mostly out of towners who are only there a few days a year and so play much more per day.
Therefore a Vegas player would tend to have much more play per lounge visit, so you’d think they would spend more per lounge visitor.

Perhaps I have the wrong impression of the typical Diamond player in each location, or of what they are trying to gain by having the lounges. (Or maybe I have it right and this is emblematic of why they went through bankruptcy and then were bought out.)

 

I think you are absolutely correct and that's why it is the way it is. Bring the local in for a quick bite and they might drop a few hundred in a slot machine. Food costs are minimal as it is nearly exactly what the buffets are serving so it is already being made anyway. Alcohol costs are potentially impactful, but with the local likely going home they count on them drinking less. Without the incentive of an easy free meal, the local might just grab a quick dinner elsewhere and never come in.

In Vegas, the push to get the tourist to high dollar restaurant is much more important and since the individual is mostly captive, there is no real chance they will just stop and eat on their way home. Also, the theory that generating more revenue per lounge visit would lead to more spend per lounge visitor is counter intuitive to truly smart business. The quality of the Lounge is not going to make or break where the average visitor stays in LV, and if you already have the advanced status with Caesars odds are you may be staying there anyway. As such, spend as little as possible since the average Diamond player will stay on property regardless.

In AC, they use the Lounge as pretty close to a loss leader, I would venture that with the quality of the booze being served and the food, the average visitor is going to cost the casino right around the $10 entry, but they are going to at least be on property, maybe on a day they wouldn't have normally and play a little bit more.

AC is a very competitive market for comps, which is why I am finding them better than I ever have before. The lounges are the same way. All or nearly all casinos in AC have a high quality upper tier lounge and so if you want to compete, you have to have that too. In LV it's the opposite.