The final day of the annual Casino Marketing & Technology conference has always been earmarked for host and player-development issues. This year’s event in Reno was no different.
Janet Hawk, who has been a casino host from the Gulf Coast to the Las Vegas Strip, kicked off the morning keynote session telling the audience that every casino department and every employee needs to serve as a host, not just the player-development team.
She stressed, “It’s every single person’s responsibility to sell the casino. Our guests don’t care what department you work in.” She explained that the dedicated hosts must also realize, “We deal with two kinds of guests in the casino: internal and external. And if you treat either one of them differently, there is something fundamentally wrong.”
In other words, it’s crucial for hosts to foster and maintain excellent relationships, not only with their players, but with all the other departments, in order for them to be successful in their own jobs. Having friends in hotel, cage, and food and beverage can be critical. She told numerous stories from her career about her fellow team members helping her succeed or making her job easier when things weren’t going well.
But the remainder of her remarks, many of them amusing, were tips on dealing with guests and managing workflows. “The more humble you can be as a host, the more successful you can be. Okay? It’s not about you. It’s about the guest and delivering service on their terms. We all have customers that don’t want to be bothered, right? Can we still deliver great guest service? For sure. And then we have those guests, that if given the opportunity, would take up our entire shift talking your ear off about quilting. Not that there’s anything wrong with quilting, but eight hours? No. No. No.”
Some of her best tips concerned how hosts should allocate their time. “Stop trying to multitask. Multitasking is a myth. Our brain doesn’t work that way. Stop doing it. It doesn’t work. What happens is that your brain has to shift from one thing to another. And that’s where you waste time. So you need to start practicing on monotasking, one thing at a time. “
She continued, “Find break points. Your mind needs a break from back-to-back meeting stuff that we’ve gotten into in our society. You need a minute or two before each meeting. You need five to 10 minutes to decompress. Okay? We’re overwhelming our brain. We’re overwhelming ourselves. So again, find break points.”
In response to a question about whether the latest high-tech hosting software has made the job easier or more complicated, Hawk said, “I would have given my right arm for some of the technology that you guys have now.”
After years as a host herself, for the last nine years, Hawk has been with Raving Consulting, specializing in player-development issues. Continuing on the question about new technology she said, “Yes, it does make it super easy. But you must use it, right? We can also get paralysis of analysis, because we’re so busy looking at all this technology and all this information we have now that we’re not actually getting out on the floor. We’re not picking up the phone. For me personally, like I said I’d given my right arm to have some of these hosting systems.”
Over 300 participants attended the three-day the Casino Marketing & Technology Conference held in Reno at the Grand Sierra Resort. Next year the event shifts to the Pechanga Resort Casino in southern California on July 15-17, 2025.
