Gaming and hospitality companies struggle to balance costs and benefits when enriching the customer experience. SAS Analytics software powers Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVSC) global marketing programs and improves decisions about tough business problems. LVSC selected SAS for Patron Value Optimization, featuring comprehensive predictive analytics and data mining and graphical campaign management, to help speed campaign planning and execution. The deep understanding that SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, provides about customer needs, preferences and behavior allows LVSC to develop deeper relationships with guests while growing revenue and profits.
The Las Vegas Sands loyalty program, Grazie, encourages customers to charge everything to their rooms — gaming, meals, even spa treatments and shows. The company uses SAS Analytics to turn volumes of detailed information about interactions and purchases into meaningful insights so they can better segment and target customers. More than any other business process today, analytics is the differentiator that elevates successful businesses in all industries. Organizations that find and nurture the talent to foster an analytics culture gain a competitive edge. This company has made the move from pockets of analytic excellence to the pervasive use of evidence-based decision making. The analytics culture at LVSC encourages employees to continually look for ways to increase the value that can be delivered to customers.
«SAS enables us to access, aggregate, sort and view any available data point at any time,» said Rom Hendler, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, LVSC. «Other analytics software collapsed under this heavy load of campaign management records, but SAS handles it with ease, digging deeply into the data to predict future customer needs so we can tailor offers. The resulting increase in responses is impressive. From our call center to the board room, predictive analytics are helping us meet customer needs and control costs better than ever.»
When LVSC began rolling out its innovative profit optimization approach, it combined revenue management, sales and marketing, and CRM to more clearly understand individual customer profitability. An early benefactor of the approach, Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, needed to make sense of the many points of data generated as customers enjoyed the convention center, hotel, shopping, restaurants, nightclubs, entertainment, museum and casino. Payback from its integrated approach has been significant. Using SAS for Patron Value Optimization and hotel revenue optimization software from IDeaS, a SAS company, Marina Bay Sands analyzes data, aligns distribution channels with pricing, and allocates inventory to benefit its most profitable customers. By coordinating pricing strategies with guest satisfaction efforts, Marina Bay Sands is keeping occupancy up and room rates profitable in each season.
«Tough economic conditions have encouraged better communication between revenue management and marketing,» said Kelly McGuire, Executive Director of the SAS Hospitality and Travel Global Practice. «SAS Analytics supported the organizational and cultural change LVSC needed to build its global marketing program. With revenue managers and marketers pulling from one data source, communications with customers achieve a higher level of personalization and professionalism — and they are more profitable.»
To get answers to complex revenue optimization questions, each Sands property starts with customer profitability calculations generated by SAS. Based on a customer’s past stays, casino floor activity and other purchases, SAS creates a forecast of what the customer will likely spend on the next visit. IDeaS(TM) software factors that information with availability and demand into prices. Now, as Sands marketers evaluate new opportunities, they rely on SAS to determine how aggressively to pursue market share increases.
«By combining data mining and revenue optimization, Sands properties can allocate rooms based on the potential profitability of each customer and the opportunity cost of the room,» continued Hendler. «Casinos and hotels using predictive modeling and revenue management are smarter about pricing; we wish all were using analytics this way.»
Today’s announcement came at The Premier Business Leadership Series event in Singapore, a thought-leadership conference presented by SAS that brings together more than 600 senior-level attendees from the public and private sectors to share ideas on critical business issues.