Ask the Slot Expert: Casinos banish birthday promotions

It looks like Covid is responsible for the extinction of another long-running promotion.

Covid has already caused locals casinos to reassess their buffets. For the two largest players, Station Casinos has closed all of their buffets and Boyd has closed all but one.

The one buffet Boyd reopened makes sense. It's in Main Street Station in downtown Las Vegas, where other casinos are a short walk away. In this respect it is like casinos on the strip -- competition is next door. You don't want to give visitors a reason to go to a neighboring casino where they might lose the rest of that day's bankroll.

Gold Coast (a Boyd property) is across the street from Palms. The remaining Boyd properties and all of the Station Casinos properties have no competition in walking distance. I'd venture to say that almost everyone who leaves a locals casino to get something to eat is either going home or stopping to pick something up on the way home. They're not going to another casino.

Other promotions that didn't reappear with reopening are some promotions for the 50-and-over crowd. Station used to have a slot tournament on MyGeneration day and Boyd had a cash drawing on Young at Heart day. Neither one returned with reopening.

The Cinemark theater I go to often has had many showings between 10 and 11 this month. That's a bit early for me to have my usual popcorn and Coke ICEE, but a perfect time for an iced coffee and a breakfast sandwich. I asked an employee at the concession stand if they still had the Starbucks coffee drinks they had before the Covid shutdown. She said they did not and she wasn't sure if they would come back. She also said the coffee counter in the casino was closing around 1PM now. Staffing problems.

A friend back in New Jersey said that the Starbucks he used to frequent is temporarily closed due to staffing. My regular Dunkin Donuts shut down their mobile ordering one morning last week because only two employees opened the store and they would not be able to handle a rush of mobile orders.

These coffee shop problems made me realize something that buffets, tournaments and drawings have in common. They all require employees to run them. Employees who may be in short supply now.

The tournaments and drawings may return once the labor issue returns to normal. The buffets, though, are probably gone for good.

At Red Rock, at least. Part of the former buffet area is now used for a posh high-limit table games room. Some or all of the remaining former buffet area may be used for high-limit slots. Given that Station Casinos management has said that they lose money on buffets, Red Rock is replacing the old high-limit tables room and a nightclub with new restaurants, and there's really no other area at Red Rock to have a buffet, there'll be no more all you can eat at Red Rock.

Suncoast hasn't done anything with its buffet area yet, so its buffet could reopen.

I recently found another promotion that seems to be Covid cancelled: birthday kiosk games.

Station and, I'm pretty sure, Boyd used to have a pick'em kiosk game I could play on my birthday. The prizes were point multipliers, free play, and dining credits.

This year, I didn't get any mailers about a birthday game. I checked at the kiosks just to be sure. There was no mention of my birthday.

They knew it was my birthday, though. Whenever I inserted my card into a machine, the card reader display showed a Happy Birhday! message. And Boyd sent me an email thanking me for visiting one of their casinos on my birthday.

The birthday promotion doesn't require any employees, so a lack of personnel can't be the reason it's no longer offered.

I guess the reason is that casinos have cut back on awarding points and giving gifts in the past two years and still people come and the casinos are reporting record revenue.

I guess the birthday promotions are gone for good too.

Did your casino do anything for you on your birthday?

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