What are customers prioritizing as the Covid-19 pandemic drags on? With casinos now mostly reopen in the U.S., we can observe and get anecdotal stories, but a real study provides better data to work off of. Thankfully, Brett Abarbanel, Director of Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) international gaming institute has conducted one with the help of KPMG, and she joined our Becky Liggero Fontana for the latest episode of The Long Con.

The study revealed five key takeaways that customers care about most, and safety comes first. “Two-thirds of the people that we surveyed were particularly concerned about health and safety as their number one concern or consideration when they’re talking about coming back to land-based gambling operators, whether that be a card room or a casino or casino resort,” Abarbanel said. “Whereas only about 30 percent of the people that we surveyed said that their financial situation was going to be their number one consideration there, and only about 20 percent indicated that the general economy was a concern for them in terms of coming back to some of these entertainment expenditures.”

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The second takeaway was that just having a clean environment isn’t enough; customers want to see employees doing the work. “79 percent of the people that we surveyed said they actually want to see the measures, don’t just tell me that you’re doing it, don’t issue a press release saying we’re cleaning this x number of times per day and we have this many employees working on our cleanliness features and we’re using this brand to do the cleaning,” she said. “They actually want to see it happening, they want to see the employees out there on the floor wearing the PPE, having their masks on.”