Members of Caesars Entertainment’s popular player loyalty program, Total Rewards, have been champing at the bit for the next iteration of the company’s mobile app, and it appears they need champ no further.
The new app is called Play by Total Rewards, and it’s free at the iTunes store. Or possibly it’s just called “Play.” By Total Rewards. Let’s not get stymied with details, shall we?
View desktop version. As of March 1, Caesars Rewards offers 5x Tier Credits on hotel stays and resort fees booked directly with Caesars. You would only need to spend $3,000 on hotel accommodations vs. $15,000 previously. This makes gaining Diamond status significantly easier. Caesars currently has 39 different properties in 13 different US states as well as in Canada.
The brand new app appears to be in a testing phase, as no official announcement of the app has been made. We’ve got a first look!
The Play by Total Rewards app has flown under the radar, but this blog flies even lower.
The only way we knew about the new app was a message on one of the interactive digital kiosks at The Linq (see below). Guests are prompted to have a top secret app link e-mailed or texted to their phone.
Somebody’s trying to slip a soft launch by us, but we refuse to be slipped by. (Note: That big, red arrow probably wasn’t there in real life.)
The first caveat of the Play by Total Rewards app is it is for the iPhone only, and requires that the phone be using iOS 7.0 or later. Our first hurdle leaped (we were looking for a reason to do an update, but it’s an app design pitfall to create an app which can only be used on the latest operating system, on a specific device), we dove headlong into the app.
This app is the first from Caesars Entertainment which covers all its 40-plus destinations across the country. We chose the Las Vegas region, because really, is there an anywhere else?
Sorry, other, less fun, places. Thanks to our eagle-eyed reader Steven Brown for noting the Harrah’s associated with New Orleans is actually Harrah’s Las Vegas. D’oh!
The app prompts users to log in with their Total Rewards number and password. We weren’t able to log in, despite resetting and double-checking our password. (The only review we could find on iTunes also mentioned the person couldn’t log in.) Given this app has “Total Rewards” in the name, we assume this glitch will be fixed soon.
A welcome screen has an expandable set of “cards” featuring some offerings from Caesars Palace. We assume these are featured on the app’s home screen because Caesars is the premier resort in the Caesars Entertainment portfolio in Las Vegas.
Caesars Palace can be quite a diva.
Poke at the three lines in the upper left and the main menu of the app appears, with these sections: Hotels, Restaurants, Shows, Nightlife, Things to Do and My Favorites.
All the categories have some map and location functionality, and the Hotels section pulls up all the hotels in the Caesars Entertainment family.
Caesars Entertainment has nine hotels in Las Vegas.
When you select a specific hotel, you get some basic information about the hotel, as well as the ability to book a room. (If you choose to “Book Now,” you’re basically sent to a mobile version of the hotel’s Web site.)
Wouldn’t it be cool if you hit “Book Now” and got an actual book? Books are those things people read before the Internet.
The hotel pages are light on useful information. They include check-in and check-out times, the numbers of restaurants and shows at the hotel (with no easy way to get details, although they exist in other parts of the app), and links to the hotel’s social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.
The Restaurants section is comprehensive and again has map functionality. Even if you’re not a Las Vegas expert, with this app, you’ll be able to act like one. Not that we’d know anything about acting like a Las Vegas expert. Ahem.
Caesars Benefits Service Center Now
A buffet of dining options. Including, you know, buffets.
This section also boasts some pretty sweet filtering capability. You select a price range, cuisine and hotel (or hotels), and the app cranks out all the restaurants that match your criteria. This is easily the most robust and useful component of the Play by Total Rewards app, in our humble and always-accurate opinion.
Again, the information about the specific venue is on the light side, but hours of operation and attire suggestions can be helpful. The restaurant pages do have phone numbers, so that’s handy for making reservations.
Next up: Shows. We’d love to show you that part of the app, but it crashed every time we tried to go into that section. Sort of supports our assertion the app is still in the soft launch phase.
Moving on!
The Nightlife section is straightforward, with listings of bars and lounges across town (no filtering, you get everything, in alphabetical order).
Things to Do is a catch-all for everything else, which, given that it’s Las Vegas, covers a lot of ground. Thankfully, there a filter in Things to Do.
If you didn’t go forth and filter before, do it here. And shame on you for not doing what we say the first time.
It appears the creators of the app got a little sleepy at this point, because what in the world is a “property feature,” and how is that a thing to do?
There’s a “Promotions” category, and while not fully fleshed out, this could be a great way to stay abreast of hotel promotions at your favorite casinos. As with most travel apps, a key component of success is keeping the information fresh and complete. Our favorite Las Vegas app, Vegas Mate, prides itself on frequent updates, so we’ll have to see how the Play by Total Rewards app fares. (Another bonus of Vegas Mate is it covers all of Las Vegas.)
The Play app has a Favorites section, too. So, as you’re browsing for restaurants or things to do, you can give those items a heart, and the app conveniently collects them on one page for you.
If you tap on the human head icon, you get into a Guest Services screen.
Just a couple more things to cover. Stop nodding off.
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Here, you can call or e-mail your questions to customer assistance. We didn’t try it, but if this works as it appears to, it could come in handy.
There’s also an Itinerary page accessible here, in case you missed the Favorites page, because they do exactly the same thing.
Caesar Employee Benefits Information
That’s about it. We suspect that once the Total Rewards log-in problem is resolved, the app will also be a convenient way to view one’s Total Rewards points and access offers specific to one’s tier status.
This new app covers a lot of ground, and has several useful features. It misses the opportunity to be more useful and relevant by not providing a way for people to share reviews (as the Vegas Mate app does), but companies are reluctant to do that because people don’t always say what the company would like them to.
The lack of substantive content, or authentic, trustworthy reviews and descriptions (as opposed to marketing fluff), are some of the key reasons self-serving corporate apps so seldom gain any real traction, and why they’re often little more than glorified virtual brochures.
Still, this is easily the best app from Caesars Entertainment to-date, and we suspect refinements and tweaks are still being made, and improvements will be ongoing.
It’s free, so take the new Play by Total Rewards app from Caesars Entertainment for a test drive and let us know what you think.
Background:
Caesars Entertainment Corporation is the world’s most geographically diversified casino-entertainment company. Caesars is focused on building loyalty and value with its guests through a unique combination of great service, excellent products, unsurpassed distribution, operational excellence and technological leadership.Challenges
- Caesars manages, operates, and provides services to over 50 properties in the U.S. The brand portfolio includes Horseshoe, Harrahs, Flamingo and more. Within these brands, there are iconic entertainment venues, restaurants that include celebrity chefs, and various hotel attractions. Within the U.S. and on three continents, each property has its own culture, management structure, and communications challenges.
- The Company has nearly 58,000 employees, and approximately 50,000 of them do not have corporate email addresses. The Company has a diverse workforce (from supervisors to food service professionals; from table games dealers to parking and valet attendants) – the vast majority of which do not sit behind a desk with access to a computer or email. Nevertheless, employees need to access information easily and in a way that is convenient.
- Given the nature of its workforce, Caesars sought to find a way to simultaneously and instantaneously communicate with its employees. However, it was important that the Company be able to target its communications to its different employee audiences. For example, the Company needed to be able to provide management information to its supervisors in order to engage with their direct reports and provide top of mind information. At the same time, supervisors and communications professionals need to make sure that employees were not inundated with irrelevant information.
Solution
In the spring of 2014, Caesars launched an internal communication app with the help of theEMPLOYEEapp, which it branded CaesarsToday. In doing so, it implemented a property by property deployment. CaesarsToday allows the Company to accomplish the following:
- Privacy and security.
- Only authorized Caesars employees have access to the app.
- When an employee leaves the company or changes roles within the company, the individual’s information aligns with his or her new role or departure. Those no longer employed by the company are no longer able to access the app and its content.
- Because many of the Company’s employees do not have corporate email addresses, internal communication app offers a cost-effective solution to provide information directly to employee’s smartphones. Until now, important information had to be posted “back of house” or made available via websites and 1-800 numbers.
- Unified Communication. With many brands and locations, theEMPLOYEEapp allows employees to be able to “hear” from corporate management while still receiving localized information relevant to their personal employment and hotel property.
- Targeted Communication. Through an organized content folder structure co-developed by Caesars and theEMPLOYEEapp, employees have access to daily and important information specific to their particular job functions and location.
- Robust analytics. Caesars uses its employee app to provide employees with easy access to information such as schedules, HR manuals, paychecks and messages from management. Through the analytics platform contained in theEMPLOYEEapp content management system (CMS), Caesars can determine how its app is being utilized as well as what content drives the most engagement. Interestingly, the Company determined through the analytics that the timing of publication of certain information together with payroll or schedules increased the likelihood that other corporate content reached the employees.
- Increased Engagement between Employees, Supervisors and the Company. theEMPLOYEEapp CMS allows Caesars to create different groups of employees and to distribute specific and targeted information to each employee classification. An example of Caesars taking advantage of the group functionality can be seen by valet supervisors being able to send push notifications to the home screen of their team regarding parking alerts or large events at the property. This information, which is specific to parking attendants and not relevant other employee groups, like housekeepers, is only delivered to the parking attendants’ apps.
- Real Time Communication. The internal communication app provides for the instantaneous dissemination of information that HR professionals and supervisors alike can easily upload and send out to their employees.
- Alerts. Because CaesarsToday is a native app and not a responsive website, employees have the option to receive push notifications/text alerts that appear on the home screen of their mobile device when new content is added. theEMPLOYEEapp also has a broadcast alert function that is helpful if there is a critical message, emergency or fast approaching health/wellness deadline.
Results
Kitty Conrad, Vice President of Government Affairs and Communications at Caesars:
“Our workforce at Caesars is very unique. With tens of thousands of employees and hundreds of employee roles and responsibilities, theEMPLOYEEapp allows us to quickly and cost-effectively provide our employees with a mobile solution that allows them to conveniently receive messages and important information. Until now, this was only available at the back of house, on the phone, or at special computer kiosks on premise when the employees are off shift.”
“When rolling out the CaesarsToday app to our properties, we have fostered conversations with our employees regarding how, what and how much we communicate to them and whether or not they value these communications. Our HR team is committed to furthering employee engagement and recognizes the importance of communications in doing so. TheEMPLOYEEapp is one important component of our effort to further this corporate goal.”
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