Discuss about the Casino Revenue Sensitivity to Competing Casinos.
The report discusses the current dysfunctional ties in the scope of the traditional working culture of the Hard Rock Casino of Vancouver. Employees strike and other issues have cast a negative impact upon the organisation. The current strengths and weaknesses of the organisation have been assessed by implementing the STAR model. Detailed prescriptions for eradicating the organisational issue in the company and resuming smooth business have also been provided in the scope of this assignment.
The HardRock Casino Vancouver is conducting and managing gambling with a mannerism of social responsibility by indulging into the needs of the American Citizens. The Casino offers exclusive and innovative gambling entertainment by means of the following facilities. These are:
Gambling is perceived and publicised as an exclusive entertainment meant for the adults. Clarity of operations is complimentary to the policies of the HardRock Casino Vancouver.
Integrity and Social Responsibility are two primary values of the organisation. The games offered by the organisation at the Casino and the policies and regulatory principles followed by the company in its business strategies are fair, honest, trustworthy and straightforward.
Every action and business strategy undertaken by the policy makers of the company are considered on that basis of the impact that it creates towards the people, society as well as the communities in the country (hardrockcasinovancouver.com, 2018).
Fore mostly, the organisation operates with due respect to the players, the workers, the service providers and other internal and external stakeholders.
The HRCV is primarily associated with conducting and managing gambling in the casinos, alongside race source casinos. There are also community gaming zones besides bingo halls for commercial playing. The company have strategic partnership with private sector companies who are liable for providing and managing the facilities. These private companies in collaboration with the HRCV also gain a percentage of the winnings accumulated as a result of the games held in the casino (hardrockcasinovancouver.com, 2018).
The organisation have nearly 4,000 centres run by retailer franchises of the private sector who sells lottery tickets on behalf of the organisation. The agencies who are indulged into selling the lottery tickets on behalf of the company gain a standard commission on the basis of the number of lottery products sold by them.
Blue-Bat gamers is the tertiary partner of the Hard-Rock Casino Vancouver liable to offer the customers with options of e-Games. The games are lottery games regulated by the service providers, sports betting, e-Bingo, e-Poker and other games. The game service providers who regulate the games under the banner name of the Hard Rock Casino Vancouver and supply and update the game software gain in form of commissions and/or license fees. The company also provides business to business facilities to other vendors like Manitoba lotteries, by managing online lottery portals for the Manitoba Lotteries (hardrockcasinovancouver.com, 2018).
The Finance Control, IT technology office and the sales and marketing division of the organisation is located in Vancouver. The company has also posted field staff for operations, supervision and promotion of the services, facilities, and franchises.
The customers of HardRock Casino gets access to online lottery and online games anywhere through a simple click on their mobile. The web platform of the company operated by tertiary service providers Blue-Bat Games gives instant access to online lottery tickets in a single moment. According to Arnone and Meyerhofer (2017), online gaming portals which gives quick access are often unsecure and used by fraudsters. However, the games of HardRock Casino, Vancouver is reputed for secured and regulated online games. The mobile website for customers is highly optimised. Since 2013-14, as Arnone and Meyerhofer (2017), reports, the number of new players using the online portals have increased considerably. This is only because of the prompt online service of the company.
A customer is who is standing at the cash counter of the grocery stores might wish at that moment for purchasing a ticket of the Jackpot Lottery of that night. The amazing technological innovation and expertise of the company allows the customer to book ticket from the same pin pad. According to Cuddy and Boese (2015), this is a specimen of the use of new disruptive technology, courtesy to the spirit of adaptive and innovative culture at the Hard Rock Casino Vancouver (hardrockcasinovancouver.com, 2018). This is an exclusive seamless facility that enables the customers to purchase tickets at any point of time. This has a subtle add-on advantage. Often customers are not up with the mind-set of purchasing the tickets of the lottery. However, they reported that initially they did not have the plan of purchasing the tickets. The convenience of the service attracted them to buy tickets.
The Casino assumed its services since 2013. Then onwards the number of customers have increased largely. The customers are of varying age groups. There are young customer of age 25 to 30 years, alongside people who are 60 to 70 years old. This place is one of the most popular playing joint among players. According to the ideas of Strange (2015), the promotion of such organisations happens largely over word of mouth. The amount of fame that the organisation have received, is an outcome of the words of mouth publicity of the satisfied customers.
On field staff from the Hard Rock casino group take up the responsibility of communicating with the new players. Random customers are handed out scratch cards, which bears two questions that might be answered in either true or false. This temps the players and evokes their interest to participate in the lotteries. According to Lee et al. (2018), the On field teams are constantly engaged in conducting market research for researching new and innovative avenues of approaching customers. The organisation promotes gambling with a light-heartedness. The customers mostly of whom they engage, adapts to gambling for time pass or casual entertainment (hardrockcasinovancouver.com, 2018).
The Software services manager of the Hard Rock Casino Vancouver has announced the launch of some new lottery and gaming facilities. These news services would offer the Canadians a guaranteed prize of $1 Million that can be won with each attempt. Along with that the company is launching newer free to play prizes to be won by the Canadian players. This game is simple in its outlook and is equally easy to play, requiring only two numbers to be matched. The introduction of the new guaranteed prize giving of $1 Million each week, is bound to create more millionaires every week. Accounting to the players, it is a seamless transition. However, as Elias and Garfield (2016), sees it, the technical assistance team of the company is bearing an overload for enabling the players to carry on lucid gaming. Seven of the internal technology facilities and five of the player-facing machines (both e-service and traditional service) are going through up gradation, whereby the various tertiary software companies are working in cooperation with the technical assistance teams of the company itself.
The Employees at Hard Rock Casino Vancouver arte the heart of service. Approximately around 900 people are engaged in the Vancouver office of Hard Rock Casino (hardrockcasinovancouver.com, 2018). Alongside, 27000 people are appointed in the form of direct and indirect service providers at Vancouver. The organisation also follows a unique employee engagement policy.
A tertiary market research company manages the employees of the company and manoeuvres the internal policy of the organisation. The organisation has many internal policies that helps to inspire the employees. According to Argyropoulos et al. (2017), one of the principle motive of the Human Resource department of the company is to simplify the job roles for the employees. This has a twofold impact on the organisational performance. Firstly, the company has to invest more on human resource and organisational setup. However, in contrast, this helps to instil a better understanding of the job role in the employees which in turn results in increased productivity. The organisation also has a personal development scope for the employees. Along with aptitude and Job Role training they also offer attractive compensation packages to retain the employees in critical job roles. Again, Roberts (2015), states that the community investment campaign of the organisation promotes the sense of social wellness among the employees. Contribution from the corporate management’s end as well as the individual employee’s end is equally invincible for the organisational success.
Employee engagement is a direct matrix that reflects the employees’ hard work and sense of liability towards the organisation’s success. According to the ideas of Li (2018), a highly engaged workforce can help an organisation associated with the sector of public entertainment to render better and higher quality service, giving customers true value to their time and money.
Another measure of the satisfaction level of the employees in Hard Rock Casino, Vancouver is the Employee Vacancy rate. In the fiscal year 2016-17 the organisation demonstrated huge success by maintaining a lower than speculated employee vacancy level (hardrockcasinovancouver.com, 2018).
Talent appraisal is a popular policy across the organisation. This provides the employees a faster chance of getting promotions.
The Hard Rock Casino of Vancouver is a significant outlet of the brand in British Columbia. This is why celebrity gatherings are a great strength of this outlet that can attract customers’ and aggravate sales in the outlet. The Hard Rock Casino of Vancouver uses a functional organisation structure. This helps them to group similar people with same kind of work skills and experience under one department. As per Li, Kim and Zhao (2017), this is the cause behind progressive organisational output. This is also beneficial for making the employees experts in their respective fields.
The personnel of Hard Rock Casino use the star model for executing the interviews. As a matter of specification, frameworks are developed, where policies are an integral part. The managers of the Casino play an important part in developing the policies for regulating the behaviour of the staffs (Galbraith, 2014). The basic components under this theoretical consideration are situation, task, action and result.
The layout of the model clearly defines the functional organizational structure, which the casino follows. Rewards are used for luring the candidates towards the business activities of the casino. This is in terms of maintaining the pace with the altering business scenario and the requirements. Strategies are used for systematizing the business activities. Meetings are organized for assessing the effectiveness, feasibility and appropriateness of the developed strategies. Within the meetings, the managers take special care to ensure that there is link between the policies (Ulrich, 2015). This is to disseminate the important messages to the staffs. Adopting different type of strategies broadens the scope and arena of the organizational structure. Here, alignment between the policies is a strength in terms of enhancing the productivity.
Culture is also one of an important aspect in this context. Ethical code of conduct is used for preserving the workplace culture of the casino. Inspections prove effective in reducing the instances of conflicts, discriminations and harassments. This issues are weaknesses, which stall the productivity. In order to deal with the weaknesses, the casino personnel attempts to implement policies for countering the integrated organizational structure (Gobble, 2015). Mention can be made of centralization, which has enhanced the stability in the relationship between the different units of the casino. However, centralization has fragmented the responses of the casino staffs, which has attached an interrogative parameter to the productivity.
Wage issue is the biggest challenge, which the cafe is undergoing at the present stage. The workers, for expressing their opposition towards the inadequate salaries, are holding strikes. Under such situation, the managers are in intense pressure in terms of maintaining the balance between the internal and the external activities. Along with this, inadequate games have decreased the passion of the customers towards the services of the casino. This has adversely affected the sales revenue and profit margin (Miterev, Mancini & Turner, 2017).
Adopting social media marketing has proved beneficial for the casino in terms of increasing the trafficking of the audience towards the brand image. Along with this, social media has enabled the staffs to maintain the balance between the supply and demand. This ability has enhanced the transparency in the business activities, which is an efficient means for adding to the customer base. Apart from this, designing policies and rewards reflect the consciousness towards mitigating the differences in the units. Interactive sessions, for this purpose, have acted as an evaluation for the casino personnel regarding the achievement of the identified and specified goals (Pereira et al., 2016). Within the policies, inclusion of the incentives was one of the main propositions. This was to lure more number of candidates. The aim of incentives was also to retain the staffs.
Drafts of the minute meetings and plans were sent to the Director for gaining his approval. A meeting was organized where presentation was carried out for briefing the director about the policies and plans. SMART objective of the plans and procedures resulted in the approval from the director. This was an indication for progressing with the plans and strategies.
Currently, the staffs of Hard Rock Casino are looking for salary hikes. This is for getting value for the hard work, which they are doing for taking the casino to the peak of success. For this, the stability needs to be restored within the functional units. This would result in the collaborative output, needed for developing policies and plans (Benn, Edwards & Williams, 2014). Involving the staffs in the decision-making process would be fruitful in terms of catering to their needs, demands and requirements. Here, consciousness needs to be projected towards their individual sentiments, which if affected would destroy the purpose of change. Consideration of Data Protection Act (1998) would be fruitful in terms of exposing ethical approach towards the workplace issues.
Uploading survey and feedback forms would be effective in terms of gaining awareness regarding their approach. This awareness is crucial in terms of developing quality programs for the staffs. Experimenting with the games would help the personnel to gain an insight into their specific tastes and preferences (Cameron & Green, 2015). However, rationality needs to be maintained in this experimentation, as it might affect the sentiments of the customers. Herein lays the appropriateness of marketing mix, which would be beneficial in terms of identifying the target audience.
Considering Kotter’s eight step change model would be beneficial for the casino staffs in terms of managing the planned change. This would prove effective towards exposing appropriate approach towards the planned change. This brings behavioural theory into the discussion, which is an important aspect for determining the factors, which enhances the professionalism of the staffs (Aarons et al., 2015). Adhering to the standards and codes of the Ethical Code of Conduct would be a planned action in terms of gaining trust, loyalty and dependence from the staffs and the customers. Liberal approach in the counselling sessions would be a reasoned action towards influencing the clients.
Filling the performance gaps is one of the other changes for which change is needed in the workplace of Hard Rock Casino. Typical example of this would be HR policies in the recruitment and selection. Adopting latest and modern systems would be a necessity in terms of luring the candidates. Social media is one of the efficient and effective means for adding to the customer base (Benn, Edwards & Williams, 2014). Evaluation is necessary in terms of assessing the feasibility of the proposed changes. This is in terms of examining the extent to which the changes align with the identified and specified objectives. 4. Strengths and flaws in the new organisational design
Any initiative for change in the management is impossible to occur without voluntarily participation and campaigning by the members of the top management of the Hard Rock Casino of Vancouver. It is primarily necessary to introduce change in the CRM strategies. In this context, Donnelly et al. (2016), states that the major drivers of change in the Grad Rock casino of Vancouver are the change agent who have a key role to play in advising the kind of change that is needed to be introduced in the organisation. They include the CRM experts and strategy planners who would work in collaboration with the internal policy makers to introduce changes in the management of the organisation. Involvement in the next level is the liability of the team leaders, who ensure that the employers understand and perform, according to the organisation’s demands or the clients. In this regard, it is the duty of the team leaders to see if the clients facing employees realise their roles and collaborate with the customers to understand their demands. Other major part of the responsibility for change is to be undertaken by the team of executive experts who steers the performance of the employees working in the casinos. Recently, the casino is facing issue like increase of process and rise in the rate of corporate and gaming entertainment taxes. Besides, the change management in the company introduced after 2014, have not worked properly. At this moment a new pricing strategy s requited for supporting the cause. According to the views of Varna (2016), the most important component of the revenue management in the company is an innovative pricing policy. At first it is necessary to gather reports form the IT team, along with the marketing and operations team for settling a new plan. In case if there is a rising demand due to the casino games and the assured prize policy of the company, they should bring the hotel business in alignment and raise the lodging prices of the Hard Rock Hotel. In this context a new marketing team is to be formed by combining the experts of the marketing teams of the hotel and the Casino in Vancouver. The management should also ensure effective communication among the player marketing team and the casino management. A CRM software vendor should be contracted by the project management team of the organisation. The team would monitor the sales and gather reviews of the gamers of the Casino. The direct mail policy of the company is to be altered. Instead of offering free rooms to the players, they can charge the players for room rent. In case if the players emerge to be winner they would get a complete cashback of the room rents. The general policy of the casino was not competent enough. It often allotted low potential players with high end amenities like free lodging in star rated rooms or complimentary room or beverages. According to Elias and Garfield (2016), another important role is to be played by the Casino managers. Various assistant manager should be present on the floor alongside the workers who would monitor the players. The management should also decide the playing capacity (investment capacity) and accordingly allocate the amenities to the players. As an instance, the biggest bidders in a game and the biggest winners if the day would get free boarding facilities. Or else it can be decided upon with close interpersonal talk with the players about their convenience in investing.
The major advantage of the afore-stated policy is that the players’ would be more interested to keep playing so that they can win a greater value. Again, the winners would be satisfied to accept the honour and spread word of Mouth publicity. However, there are some major disadvantages also. As per Arnone and Meyerhofer (2017), many potential players who are winning the games on a regular basis might feel humiliated if they are kept bereaved of the amenities on a certain day. This can cause negative publicity for the organisation.
Another important change that is needed to be introduced is that an employees’ forum is to be formed. This forum would investigate the factors for the resentment among the employees and according find out measures for the mitigation of their issues. The dealers, Servers, cashiers and the slot assistants need to have proper representation in the team. Another essential inclusion that is required in the organisational structure is that of a surveillance team. This team would be entitled to maintain congruency in the revenue generation and the revenue collection. The major advantage of this change inclusion is that the monetary needs of the company can be addressed in a better way. The income disparity of the company can be ended as an outcome. After that, they can easily introduce an employee appraisal policy.
This inclusion can have a weakness also. The expenses that the company have to incur in order to introduce this change is high. Hence. Tight planning is necessary for introducing this change.
The organisation has followed a centralised model for administration. After the segregation of work groups as discussed it would be difficult to monitor policies and frame decisions at the meetings. In this context, GalbRaith (2014), states that the departmental managers have to take up an advanced and aggravated role. The issues between the players and the employees, the Gameboys and the financial experts have to be focused upon with greater vigour.
Another important challenge for the management is to address and fulfil the demands if the employees forum. This is of great importance for the smooth running of the casinos.
The employee appraisal policy in the company have to be revised and the amount of allowances for the employees have to be increased. The new policy of focusing more on e-gaming is also commendable. The organisational change that the company s going through is causing problems in the internal environment of the company.
The policy for handling the online workforce of the company have to be formulated with immediate effect. The company have focused more upon expansion of gaming facilities. They have to give in to the causes of the employees also. The mitigation of the resentment of the employees is very essential since, in the casino business, management of the players and associated matters is a big issue that is completely dependent on the experienced taskforce of the Casino.
The primary challenge for Hard Rock Casino is the framing of the new employee forum. The excess reliance on the third party payroll for payments is another challenge. The HR department have to be expanded. This is another major challenge. Employee’s strikes and other issues sends a negative brand image out in the public. Constant publicity and rebranding through new games and services have to be carried on with continued vigour. As stated by Elias and Garfield (2016), the lack of experience in this context is a major challenge. Lastly, formulating ways to implement the new policy for the lodging and gaming facilities for increased revenue generation is another challenge (Dawson & Andriopoulos, 2014).
Conclusion
The Hard Rock casino of Vancouver has expanded the domain of their service in innovative ways. Hence the customers have been attracted to the new games and lotteries that have been started by the organisation in recent times. However, analysing the current situation in the internal environment of the casino, it can be concluded that the management have focused more on expansion of service and expanding the customer based. The causes of the employees have been constantly disregarded. Moreover, the service patterns of traditional casino gaming in the Hard Rock Casino is also flawed. The issues have been discussed in the report. However, if the organisation is able to address those issues in the ways described in this project, the revenue generation can be alleviated. This would help the organisation to resolve the employee’s issues and conduct business smoothly.
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