Barona Casino, San Diego’s casino, is one of the largest casino operations in California, with over 125 000 square feet of alcohol-free gaming and hospitality space.
The casino boasts over 2000 new hi-tech slot machines as well as gaming tables for blackjack, poker and other card games with more than $7 000 000 paid out every day.
The casino prints its own photo ID badges to identify the hundreds of employees as well as the service contract vendors they use. The migration of card printing never stops at one application.
When the casino decided to upgrade its Club Barona membership program, the plan was to encourage everyone visiting the casino to become a member by issuing personalised membership cards as they arrived. Club members earn valuable points good for cash back, free meals, and merchandise as well as other benefits.
The casino needed to issue the membership cards as quickly and easily as possible. The solution was to install several dozen Eltron P310 plastic card printers, equipped with magnetic encoders, at each of the casino's host stations in the entry area as well as other strategic locations throughout the casino.
Upon becoming a member each guest receives a plastic 'credit' card with his or her name and membership number printed on the front. The cards are magnetically encoded for accepting and recording data and automatically accumulate points as the cards are used.
The colourful credit card-sized plastic cards are also the key to tracking literally millions of gaming dollars, with all the information stored in the casino's centralised computer system database. Besides using the cards to reward members, the casino also tracks each card to track the popularity of individual machines, types of games, the number of transactions per card, and much more. This information is used in determining the popularity of the various types of games members prefer, which, in turn, helps the casino provide the gaming service members want.
Initially the club used blank white plastic cards that incorporated a bar code. With the installation of the new gaming machines, magnetic striped cards were required.
The club also decided to upgrade the appearance of the cards at the same time, deciding to use cards with a preprinted design rather than print the design at the time of issue.
Also, the per card cost for preprinted cards is considerably less than the cost of individually printing each card in full colour because of the large volume of cards involved.
On-demand printing
After an extensive evaluation of various plastic card printers, the Eltron P310 was selected as it proved to be economical, the most trouble-free and easiest to use. Capable of producing full-colour, edge-to-edge printed cards, the Eltron P310 provides ultra-sharp print resolution for ID photos, graphics and text. The unit prints a full colour card in just 25 s. The printer's low-maintenance design includes self-cleaning card handling, and automatic ribbon synchronisation making it easy to use and service.
For further details contact Eltron on 011 787 0355 or e-mail: [email protected]
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