Here’s another questions around hosts we get quite a bit:
Can low budget players get casino hosts? Is there a magic amount to earn one? How does one go about getting one?
Nola K.
As a general rule, the lower your budget, the less likely a host will be able to pick you up as a client, and it’s a pretty simple reason why.
Up to a certain point, the casino offers we as players get will generally be about as much as casinos are willing to offer for your play. Generally speaking, casino offers will aim to offer you somewhere between 20% and 40% of your expected loss in the form of offers.
So let’s consider how that might play out. Let’s say you go to the casino with $100. The casino offer that will be designed to bring you back will probably fall somewhere between $20 and $40 in overall value. Keep in mind this will be often spread across a number of buckets – casino play, food, hotel discounts (or maybe the occasional weeknight comp), etc.
It’s possible you might leave something on the table – maybe you don’t need a hotel room. But if you already got $20 in free play it isn’t likely the host can do anything else for you.
Now compare that to a $1,000 budget player. Now that 20% to 40% looks more like a range of $200 to $400. First off, that’s just a much bigger range, but second of all, when spreading that across all the buckets that your comps may cover, you may be more likely to leave something on the table. And at that point, the host might see that and be able to do something for you.
There’s no magic number to a host per se – each property has a threshold where they’d reach out to you as a player if you hit it, and that can vary by property. Locals properties or budget properties will likely have a lower threshold than a high-end luxury property.
The good news is that anyone can speak to a host, and the easiest way to get a host is often simply visiting the host desk, introducing yourself, and ask. If you have the sort of play that they look for, they may take you on as a client. The worst case is they’ll politely decline.
The biggest challenge for low budget players is hosts often look at a metric called ADT – Average Daily Theoretical – to determine who’s worthy of being a host. Low budget players may actually spend a lot, but because each trip isn’t a lot of money, they may still get passed over because enticing another trip won’t lead to much.
If you’re in that category, one of the easiest things you can do to shift how you look in the eyes of the casino marketing department and the hosts is to go less often, and pool your budget for bigger spends, less often. Instead of going to the casino once a week and spending $100, go once a month and spend $400-500.
In absolute dollars you’re spending the same amount of money, but now the casino sees you as someone who plays $400-500 when you come, and the offers will reflect that. This is because they presume if they can convince you to visit one more time, they have a shot at another $400-500, as opposed to that $100 a week player, where they figure they can only get $100.
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