Gaming Industry News - Features

The office holiday party; the company softball league; the baby shower for the woman who sits three cubicles down the hall; happy hour with your co-workers: These are all part of the social rhythms and obligations of the modern workplace - some company sponsored, others initiated by employees - ostensibly meant to help us form and maintain close relationships with our colleagues.

To Jody Foster, disruptive people in any type of organization - from a big corporation to a major health center - can poison the atmosphere for everyone with whom they interact.

Location, location, location (and throw in a little population density and traffic). The competition for one of three casino rights, this one in Eastern Massachusetts, is firing right up.

New England will quickly start to look like the Strip in Las Vegas - a casino on every block, each bigger, better, more entertaining than the competition. We are not there yet, but the scene will be very lively in three to five years.

Human Resources was once thought to be a discipline of the future in the early 1990’s, when everything was so rosy and plentiful. Then, we had the high tech implosion, terrorism attacks, two wars, a global economic melt-down and very slow rebuild. Companies changed – contraction, downsizing, relo, outsourcing, acquisition at quite a pace.

Recently, I wrote an article about how hotels hate online travel agencies (OTAs) because of the commissions charged by the sites for each and every booking. Today, I want to talk about the other major reason that hoteliers hate OTAs: the time and work that it takes to manage them. (Can you say never-ending?!)

Over the past couple of years, hating the OTAs has become an international pastime; so much so that I think that they’re planning on naming it an official sport in future Olympic Games, alongside the triathlon and archery.

Hospitality is one of the world's largest and oldest industries, with lodging as the most prominent segment. The product, i.e., the service delivered by hotels, motels and resorts, is very easily defined: shelter, a clean room and bed and perhaps a meal. This core concept and basic market demands haven't really changed since the medieval days of roadside inns, and it is this age-old simplicity which has been the hotel industry's greatest asset.

Many hoteliers and revenue managers don’t know that revenue management in hotels actually developed from the successes of airlines’ yield management practices. I know what you’re thinking: 'my hotel doesn’t fly, so I can’t use the same processes that an airline does. It just doesn’t make good business sense.'

The Cash Cow still produces, but the diet is changing and that lush gaming landscape begins to face some draught possibilities. With a slow recovery from the recession and the intense rivalries between particularly the Eastern States, Gaming has another challenge for their players - internet gambling. Why I can soon 'play' in my PJ’s from my bedroom!