opinion: gaming kiosks
enter sweepstakes, sign up for events
and obtain personalised rewards in the
form of coupons and bonus slot tickets.
Digital signage mounted on the kiosks
above the touchscreen interfaces
display advertising and other casino
information such as drawing winners
and jackpot payouts. Livewire now has
over 80 kiosks deployed around the
Foxwoods property.
Expanding functionality
The features being incorporated
into kiosks at the casino are being
expanded on a regular basis. New
functions include wayfinding, food and
drink ordering, and directing guests to
their favourite gaming machines.
Olea Kiosks is a leading
manufacturer of loyalty program
kiosks for the gaming industry. The
company also serves sectors including
higher education, government, human
resources, retail and hospitality. Frank
Olea, CEO of Cerritas, California-based
Olea Kiosks Inc. said, “I’m also seeing
a little bit of interest in functions such
as player registration, where people
can register for slots tournaments and
things like that.”
Olea Continued, “We’ve seen some
new card printers come out that offer
the ability for kiosks to hold multiple
types of cards and have the ability
to print a guest’s name on them,”
Adding, “That allows the casino to store
different levels of player loyalty cards
and then print on those, so the guest
doesn’t have to go to customer service
to get a new card.”
“The look and feel is changing in
the gaming world,” commented Liz
Messano, sales manager with Las
Vegas-based SlabbKiosks. Along with
casinos, SlabbKiosks’ customers include
government organisations, universities,
financial institutions and healthcare
providers.“Big and clunky is becoming
a thing of the past, so casinos and such
are looking to the kiosk industry to help
them with this transition,” Messano
said. And because many casinos are
attached to hotels, companies are
incorporating kiosk functions geared to
guests spending their vacations on the
property.
“At MGM Resorts, kiosks help us to
enhance our service to guests,” said
Mary Hynes, director of corporate
communications with Las Vegas-based
MGM Resorts International. “At our
ARIA and Monte Carlo resorts in Las
Vegas, we plan to begin offering checkin and check-out at kiosks as an option
for our guests. We also offer Internet
kiosks where guests may print their
boarding passes.”
The ARIA Resort & Casino and the
Monte Carlo are just two of the 14
properties MGM operates in Las Vegas.
The company also operates resorts in
Mississippi and Michigan, and holds
interests in four other properties in
Nevada, Illinois and Macau, China.
So with the gaming industry
becoming increasingly competitive
even as it grows and properties
becoming ever more creative in their
efforts to attract new patrons, the
race is on to develop new self-service
capabilities that can be incorporated
into the kiosk. The capability of the
technology is limited only by the
imagination of the people developing
those capabilities. “It’s a mature
technology, but we get requests all
the time for new functions,” Olea
said. “It’s probably time that we start
looking at making the kiosk do things
beyond what they already do. You’ve
got the machine and you’ve got a
captive audience but it’s time to start
expanding their use.” n
KIOSK solutions 39