Gaming and Casino Management - Research Paper Example

Gaming and Casino Management Introduction The finance department of a hotel that supports a casino is given the task to control the monetary assets in the hotel to balance the hotel activities with the gaming activity. While the two activities may be profitable for the hotel, there are instances when hotels fail to manage the gaming activity as required and the hotel ends us losing a lot of money through fraudulent activities by the finance managers. One of the most common forms of theft in hotels is misappropriation of funds by the staff members. Casinos make a lot of money and the finance department is left with the difficult task of budgeting and managing the money. The key to a successful gaming business in a hotel is for the management to look into making constant developments in the casinos in order to keep the customers thrilled and ready to take risks with their money. Many gaming businesses in hotels fail to prosper due to different forms of thefts that are stealthily committed by the management of the hotels, especially in the finance department. In this paper, we will look into gaming and casino management, placing emphasis on theft in hotels. Casino Gaming Management The Financing department in a hotel supporting a casino must look into managing the funds collected from the casino so that it provides an all round growth to the hotel and gaming area. Hotels that have casinos are prone to mismanagement since the two activities require thorough monitoring from the finance department of the hotel. Misappropriation of funds is common in such hotels, especially when the management is looking into the budgeting process. In most cases, the gaming activity in the hotel makes less profit than the hotel itself and it is just kept as a fun place for the hotel customers. This means that the management has to use the profit from the hotel activities once in a while to boost the development of the casino. Finance managers have been known to steal money from their hotels while drafting the budgets. The thefts are normally done as an inside job that involves one or several of the employees (Goldmann, 2012). Managing a casino entails more than just ensuring that the customers are satisfied and having a good time while they are gaming in the casino. Good casino managers should focus on capturing more customers and ensuring that the new members are willing to spend even more while in the casino. In order for this to happen, the casino must create a very good impression on its target customers so that they can be enticed to join and place their money on the betting tables. This can be done through various ways like giving very good deals when the players are betting against the house and ensuring that the gaming process is transparent for the customers to trust the casino. There have been many cases whereby the casino management has been accused of theft in the gaming process. Such cases involve the management tipping their dealers and croupiers to play tricks on the customers to lose their bets. When such an incident occurs, the casino may end up losing most of its customers due to lack of trust. Other theft cases that have been reported around the world are where there are many players betting against each other and the dealers choose sides. Dealers may be corrupt, favoring their favorite gamers to win the bets. It is the duty of the manager in the casino to look into such issues to ensure that the players and the dealers are following the rules of the casino at all times (Kale, 2012). All these forms of thefts reduce the profitability of the casino and the hotel in general. The management in hotels supporting gaming casinos is normally focused on improving the customer hospitality services. The finance management may overestimate the funds required for service upgrades in a bid to satisfy their greed. Managers in big hotels only look into making the customers happy and they will do anything to keep their hotel’s competitiveness. Having a casino in the hotel is one of the best customer enticement strategies. The fact that casinos in hotels are kept just as a luxury activity that comes along with the high class hospitality makes it easy for the finance managers to steal from the hotels through fraudulent schemes in the name of keeping the customers entertained. Such schemes may include the installation of new gaming machines that are overpriced in the hotel budgets (Goldmann, 2012). Hotel finance managers deal with all the monetary planning in the business. All the money collected from the hotel and from the gaming area is taken through to the finance managing department. There have been many reported incidences where the employees in the finance department in hotels choose to give in to their greed and use the hotel’s money to gamble in the casinos. While there are certain rules that hinder the hotel and Casino employees from taking part in the gaming activity in their hotel these employees employ other people to satisfy their needs by giving them the money to act on their behalf in the casinos (Goldmann, 2012). The finance department in a hotel supporting a gaming casino is directly affected by the financial performance of the casino. When the casino makes huge profits, the finance department in the hotel is given a larger budget to control; similarly, when the casino gives diminishing returns, the finance management is left with the task to cater to the recovery of both sectors. Hotel thefts mostly occur during the high profit seasons when the hotel is making large profits. The internal auditors take advantage of the fact that they are given the task to do calculations for the hotel’s financial performance and they wire some of the funds to their individual accounts (Goldmann, 2012). Gambling in hotel casinos is one of the most thrilling games. Gambling is normally done on table games. Depending on the jurisdiction that the casino is subject to, there are different table games that are allowed by the authorities. In most casinos, Blackjack is the most popular among gambling games. In these games, the hotel finance has the opportunity to gain a long term advantage while the players have a short term advantage to win a hefty amount of money. There are incidences in which greed overtakes reasoning and the casino may opt to take advantage of the random choices that the players have to make. Theft in the casino is done in a very tricky way such that the player will not notice. When the gamers are engaged in gambling in the Blackjack table for instance, the dealer may have tactically hidden cards that eliminate all the chances of the players to win. It is also common for some players to attempt sneaking in their own cards to steal from the house. There is always a possibility of tricky theft in the games in casinos (Reece, 2010). Thefts in Hotel Casinos that affect the Hotel’s finance The slot machines in the casinos also play as theft spots where the management is led by greed. This is done by using high tech technology to ensure that the slot machines do not let the players win for more than several times in a given period of time. While the players think that the games are just purely based on luck, the machines are doctored to only allow several wins in a given period of time so that the management can gain more cash from the innocent players. During the gaming process, the regular customers may form relationships with the dealers and together they may organize thefts against the house. This is one of the most common theft phenomena in the casinos and it is still happening despite the increased vigilance in the casinos using CCTV cameras and sound monitors. The employees and the players collaborate to cheat the system. Some players steal from the casinos by forging chips worth high amounts and using them to bet against their fellow players and the house. Others may attempt to steal the expensive chips from the casino to be used elsewhere. The management in a casino is under constant risk of such thefts (Wheeler, Round & Wilson, 2011). Casinos deal with hefty amounts of money on a daily basis and they require money transportation to and from the banks. There are many transportation agencies that have been linked to casino thefts. Thefts conducted by the transportation agencies are often linked to an inside job between the casino employees or management and the transporting agency or one of the two parties. This kind of theft has a traditional procedure whereby the money is put in the transporting vehicle and somewhere on the way the transporters are attacked by armed thieves and the crew let them have the money. There are genuine theft cases perpetrated under very sophisticated theft plans. In Las Vegas for instance, money transporting tracks are hijacked and the transporters killed while the thieves disappear with the money (King, 2010). While it is impossible to completely eliminate the chances of such kinds of thefts in the casino, the management of a casino can effectively reduce theft chances by using different agencies and constantly changing the transportation programs. Among the top theft risks in a casino, the employees are the leading lot on the list. Employees may coordinate to make away with large amounts of money on a long term basis. Detecting thefts by the employees may be difficult for the management since most employees do not steal large amounts at once. They usually steal small amounts on a regular basis and in the long run take off with very large amounts of money. Though not common in the recent past, these forms of thefts in the casinos are viable threats. Such a case occurred in 2008 in Arizona. A Desert Diamond Casino’s slot floor employee confessed to stealing $650 thousand in a time span of two years while he was working in the casino. The employee had secured the password that was needed to process the jackpot tickets and he stole the money in small quantities over the two years without the management finding out (King, 2010). Employees may also steal expensive chips from the casinos, which they later sell to the customers on the black market. There have also been security guards that have been charged with stealing from their workplace in organized robberies. Many other cases have been reported and the risk of employee theft in casinos is yet to be completely eliminated. The location of a casino may be a predisposing factor to theft. A casino located in a busy hotel has a higher chance of theft by outsiders than a casino that is strategically located in its own setting. This is because the more people frequent the environs of a casino, the higher the risk of theft. Hotel casinos have a very large number of customers since it is a thrilling experience that many people would not want to miss when they check into a prestigious hotel. There are always chances that some of the people who check in have motives to steal from the casinos. Thieves check into the hotels and they frequent the casinos, trying to find out the security organization of the casino. Once they have a clear picture of the security system, they come up with a robbery plan that seldom fails. Many hotel Casinos are robbed by their customers. Managing these casinos in a secure way entails using technological security systems that are burglar proof and mounting a tight security system in the hotel (Reece, 2010). Conclusion Finance management in a hotel that supports gaming in a casino within the hotel is very tricky since the finance department handles a very large amount of money on a daily basis. The finance managers are highly susceptible to falling into temptations to misappropriate the funds in different ways. The finance auditors may choose to steal money from the large profits brought by the gaming activities. The casino on itself acts as a financial booster to the hotel since the big profits are channeled into making developments within the hotels to improve hospitality services. During the budgeting process for development activities in the hotel, it is common for the finance managers and their subordinates to misappropriate the funds or to overestimate the costs so that they can take off with the extra funds. Different casino thefts also affect the finance of the hotels. References Goldmann, P. (2012). Financial Fraud and How to reduce your risk. Hotel business review. Retrieved from: http://hotelexecutive.com/business_review/234/hotel-security- financial-fraud-and-how-to-reduce-your-risk Kale, S.H. (2012). Optimally Managing the Casino High-End Market. Urbino.net. Retrieved from: http://www.urbino.net/bright.cfm?specificBright=Optimally%20Managing%20the%2 0Casino%20High-End%20Market King, D. (2010). Casino Heists: Criminals are flush with Creative ideas. Daily Finance. Retrieved from: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/12/19/casino-heists-criminals-are- flush-with-creative-ideas/ Reece, W. (2010). Casinos, Hotels, and Crime. Contemporary Economic Policy, 28(2), 145- 161. Wheeler, S., Round, D. & Wilson, J. (2011). The Relationship between Crime and Electronic Gaming Expenditure: Evidence from Victoria, Australia. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 27(3), 315-338. Read More