IT is fitting that the first part of Hotel Yugoslavia's redevelopment, Grand Casino Beograd, has over the past year become the leading entertainment venue in the Serbian capital.
Once playing host to royalty and celebrities alike, the iconic hotel now houses one of the most popular and sophisticated destinations for Belgrade’s new glitterati. Exclusivity, however, is not the aim of the casino’s operators and so over the past year it has been encouraging those who frequent the city’s slot halls to expect more from their gaming experiences. Such efforts, it seems, are paying off.
Mark Banks, president of Grand Casino Beograd’s board, explained that over the course of the past 12 months the casino achieved higher than expected membership and attendance figures.
"The main success for us was that by the time we entered the third quarter we had achieved a positive cashflow," he said, "so in the first year of operation we definitely exceeded expectations."
Despite seeing a high number of customers come through the doors, Banks admitted that the last 12 months of operations did not deliver the expected spend per head - something he suggested was not necessarily down to the current economic climate.
"We have a very broad-based target market. 2008 was all about raising awareness of the casino. A lot of people have come here out of curiosity. Now we’ve got their attention it’s about translating that into spend per head," he remarked.
Set across two floors, Grand Casino boasts 25 live gaming tables and 230 slot machines. Aside from gaming, visitors can enjoy fine dining in its Diva, Ginger and Chameleon restaurants and drinks in its fashionable Piano and Roulette bars. The casino also has a multifunctional event hall, which is becoming increasingly popular with local businesses seeking a new location to host their functions.
To match its broad range of clients, the company has deliberately chosen to work with the majority of the industry’s biggest slots companies: Ainsworth Game Technology, Aristocrat, Atronic, Bally, IGT, Novomatic and WMS. Similarly, the casino’s roulette wheels and billboards are provided by Cammegh and the tables on its two main gaming floors are by TCS John Huxley, while the VIP area is stocked with Abbiati tables.
As Banks states, the casino is a cut above the rest and, by offering the most sophisticated and cutting-edge equipment, it is positioning itself at the high end of the market. This, he said, has resulted in the migration of a large number of existing gamblers away from other gaming halls and the attraction of customers who may never have set foot in a casino before.
"The response has been overwhelmingly positive," he remarked. "We’ve managed to incorporate all the different target markets so they all have a product they are comfortable with.
"There’s a lot of crossover - we have light gaming customers who have really never thought about anything other than gambling in a casino before and are now comfortable visiting the premises to see the entertainment promotions we have. And vice versa: there are people who were originally attracted to the casino for dining and entertainment purposes and are now starting to look at gaming."
The combination of gaming, entertainment and dining has been the cornerstone of the casino’s early success and the synergy between these offerings is central to its future strategy. The casino’s three restaurants represent an effective marketing tool helping to show customers how they can add to their entertainment by including gaming. To do this, the casino offers a range of promotions intended to encourage customers to make full use of its facilities.
"We have packages available in all our restaurants that combine wining and dining with gambling," Banks said. "All of the promotions we do now include an amount of gaming chips or credits for slot machines built into the price."
Banks and his colleagues are not content to rest on their laurels and continue to explore ways in which the casino experience they provide can be improved. In 2008, American roulette accounted for 80 per cent of the casino’s live game revenues and 60 per cent of total revenues. However, as Grand Casino’s customer-base matures, the attraction of roulette - at least among its existing members - is expected to diminish.
"If you open a casino in an emerging market, people are attracted to the high volatility of American roulette," Banks explained, noting that high volatility translates into low game time.
"Some people who want to come here for an extended experience and want to manage their money better will start moving on to blackjack, poker and slot machines. We saw that throughout the last quarter of last year, the number of players is growing but the attention on roulette is moving away to games where you get a little more value."
Poker is one avenue being explored by the casino, which is now licensed to offer Ultimate Texas Hold’Em and is planning to install bespoke poker pits. It currently has several poker tables, but these, Banks said, are not enough to satisfy the demand for tournaments.
"The ultimate goal is to start holding international standard tournaments ourselves," he said.
Staying in tune with player demands is central to the casino’s future plans. To ensure it continues to meet customers’ requirements, it monitors player data via Atronic’s Galaxis system on its slot machines, while also tracking information from its live tables using other systems.
"This information will decide our future strategy and decide which areas we’re going to be investing in," Banks said. "For example, we’re now looking to invest in a VIP slot area. We can see the demand for that.
"We can also see a higher increase in slot players than in live games so in future we’ll probably look to develop the slot side of the business and maybe not spend so much extra time and energy on the live games."
The casino industry in Serbia is in a state of transition and it was thought that by this stage the government would have issued a number of operating licences, but to date Grand Casino is the only venue to have been granted such approval. The government’s apparent inactivity and, in no small part, the licence process itself are proving to be significant obstacles to the development of the industry here.
"We believe that the tender process and the period of licence, which is set at 10 years from the date that the licence is given out, is flawed," Banks asserted. "This has created a barrier for other international companies that are not willing in this day and age to commit significant funds on what is a restricted licence period."
To improve the process, either the licence period ought to be extended or licence holders ought to be able to resubmit their application before the licence period expires, he said. Under current rules, the licence holder cannot apply for another until the 10-year period is finished.
And during difficult economic times, investing in new markets may be low on many operators’ lists of priorities. Yet despite the challenging trading conditions, Banks is confident that Grand Casino will boost its market share in the coming years as it strives to reach previously untapped sources.
"There are still large sections of the Belgrade market that we haven’t attracted yet, so we expect to have organic growth because we’re not a mature casino," he continued. "We’re a new product, we’re interesting and exciting, and we expect to continue growing even through these trying times."
