Short clip: Harrah's tries its hand at mobile gaming

>> Now you're also the chief innovation officer, and I, I'm really curious about the kinds of innovations you can bring in to the casino environment or the hotel environment for that matter. Especially mobility and wireless technologies and how you could, for example just be walking around, you know, making wagers or, or getting messages about, you know, some amenity that you might be able to, to use.

>> You're right on. These are the things that actually excite me. If, if your normal IT job often you get asked the question what keeps you up at night, and that job will do it. This is the one that also keeps me up because it's really the exciting and cool part. We've got the ability today, with much of the, the system implementation, the data, the customer information to do some pretty cool and compelling things. And now, as you consider innovation and the piece that technology plays in that, particularly given we're a consumer business, people have an experience, whether it's online or with their cell phones or, or fantasy football leagues, or chat. There's a lot of things we're increasingly taking for granted in our personal lives. And when you come to a resort destination or even a few hours get away at one of our more localized casinos in Missouri, or Indiana, or Illinois, you, your, it's a little bit of escapism. And so we're, we're working on a variety of approaches to make that experience even better. I alluded to some of the operational CRM. Increasingly our initiative will be on interactive CRM capabilities that say, I have personal preferences. I like certain promotions. Maybe it enters me in those. Perhaps I can find my friends. We're doing some interesting things what we'd call second change to win where, perhaps, your spouse or friend or partner that you're coming with is also gaming or on the floor somewhere. When they win, you win, or you get notified. Perhaps you've done an online community where you'd like to experience both online and offline; you know some of the friends or meet those people. It, there's all kinds of cool things that are possible. And we're now using a few of our key markets. Particularly Las Vegas and a few of the others. Begin to test and demo some of these concepts with our customers. And the response has been pretty exciting.

>> I'd like to bring my own phone in, my own Smartphone in and, and be able to get messages and see what the opportunities are, and even to make bets, you know, from that device.

>> Well, we'd love to have you come in and do that. So please make Heritage your first stop in that. I would say two things on that. That the cell phone capabilities are there today. You can do certainly SMS messaging and a variety of, of things with lab sites and things on those phones. This is a bit of the Holy Grail though, because the lack of consistency and standardization in the way phones are, are implemented and executed, the coverage inside these large casinos, steel buildings, lights not trivial. But we are increasingly making headway against that as well as an open space like here in Las Vegas where we have eight properties and you're walking between them. Now you may be surprised to know that the great state of Nevada here will be the first place where the type of gaming you just referred to will be tested. We are currently developing some trials from mobile, handheld base gaming They're on PDAs, Tablets, cell phone's a bit of a tough form factor to work with now. But it's coming. And the middle to later part of this year they'll be several tests and trials, which we expect to be right in the forefront of, going on. So come on out and visit and give it a try.

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