Another Genius Gambling Idea: Airport Slots
Gambling operators just keep bringing on brilliant ideas on how to rack up more money. First there was the House Cut, where they get as much as 5% share of the player's winnings. Second, there was the tote board that influenced the behavioral decisions of bettors. Here, they make money from the gambler's fallacy, which is a logical fallacy of having to connect (superficially) two mutually exclusive events as one. And now, with another stroke of genius, casino operators thought out of the box and said, "why limit gambling to casinos, when you could put them in other places?"
So what's the one place that doesn't run out of people? Airports. So casino industrialists struck a deal with airport management licenses with legislators to place slot machines in their airport hallways. The psychographics of this is simple: people who want to go to Las Vegas just want to gamble. In fact, a great majority of them just can't wait for it. Why wait to get to a casino when you can start gambling right after get off the plane? For this reason, airports have made some shocking millions of dollars out of this simple, but brilliant psychographic. Most people are just dying to slip a coin onto a slot machine.
The McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas has slot machines that stand alongside baggage counters. It's a perfect set-up anyway. Coping with the effects of Sept.11, airport security is so tight these days that passengers have to wait extra time inside airports. Most passengers would want to do something while they wait. And a sight of slot machine beside the waiting area is just so beckoning. One passenger, a 59-year-old man said the slot machine seemed to be calling him - and its voice sounded sexy too.
With this move, McCarran Airport is winning millions of dollars a year from their slot machines. Passengers gambling in nearby slot machines seemed to become protocol after clearing security, with spare time. They want to spend their spare change. That doesn't amount to much, but add all the spare changes of all passengers and you've hit a million jackpot.
However, slot machines aren't void of criticism either. These Airport Slot Machines also make money when people are leaving Las Vegas. And it's here that slot machines are banking on the gambler's desperation. Most people, after gambling from casinos, leave Las Vegas disappointed. They didn't a jackpot anywhere. Now the sight of a slot machine before boarding the plane is just as beckoning. With only a few gambling money left, they slip their coins onto the machine, hoping, praying for just one last game to hit it big time. Again, the slot machines make money. And another million is converted out of it.