Award Date

2009

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Hotel Administration

Department

Hotel Administration

Advisor 1

Kathryn A. LaTour, Committee Chair

First Committee Member

Karl J. Mayer

Second Committee Member

Kathleen B. Nelson

Third Committee Member

Ashok K. Singh

Graduate Faculty Representative

Michael L. LaTour

Number of Pages

94

Abstract

Once guests are inside a casino, experiential factors within the casino must be managed so that these guests are encouraged to engage in the gaming opportunities; remain in the casino to eat and shop; return to the casino; and hopefully, to recommend the casino to others. Ambient conditions have been shown to influence a person's willingness to stay in a public setting and their repatronage intentions. Air fragrance is one small, but controllable piece of the experience puzzle that includes décor, lighting, music and other ambient sounds, comfort of the seating, quality of the service, perception of cleanliness and ease of locating important destinations such as restrooms, cashiers, or exits.

An experiment was conducted in a large United States casino using four fragrances that were rotated through five different slot machine areas over a 20-day period. Analysis of the daily coin-in data for the 253 slot machines during the actual experiment and two and a half months prior, showed fragrances in general significantly and positively affected coin-in. Of the four fragrances, both a refreshing and a soothing fragrance blend with high percentages of natural components, rather than from predominately synthetic sources, significantly and positively affected coin-in.

Keywords

Casinos; Customer retention; Essential oils; Fragrances; Gambling; Gaming; Hospitality-setting fragrance use; Scents; Servicescapes; Slot machines

Disciplines

Hospitality Administration and Management

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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