MGM Rewards - Locals Experience

Very common experience. MGM, and many others, have long coded offers for locals at a lower level than those out of market. As you mentioned, your offers were better before having a local address on file.

Not saying I 100% agree with it, but the gambling industry has always viewed out of market tourists as a better target. When you fly into Vegas, and stay with them. You "should" be on the hook for your stay. Which is typically a few nights. Meals, shows, shopping, clubs and gambling. When you are local, you are much more inclined to drop by. Not eat 3 meals on site. Wont shop or pay for shows during your stay. And usually locals dont gamble as much, for as long, as those on vacation.

They really need to tempt players to fly in and commit to a vacation. Someone that lives 30 minutes down the road, not so much. So offers have always been weighted.

You mention your coin in has increased. Offers are not made in aggregate. $200K coin in over two 4day 3night trips, is $100K per trip. That is $25K coin per day, but most everyone takes "trip" for offers now.

And the per trip theo is the basis of your offers. If you are local, and now do a couple drop in visits at an MGM casino every month. That is 24 days with an average of around $8K. Still good play, but a lot less as my 1st example.

 

I totally get it! That's why I said, not that I 100% agree with it but... We are all just math. And their (and every other non-locals driven casino) analytics show this is the best way to do things. For every player like you that they lose, they save on players that do take advantage.

Using me as an example. I just booked an offer at a Strip hotel that came with $1K in free play. My offer is good for any stay for the next 60 days. Then I get a new offer code, which is still the same. You have to allow 4 days in between stays to use it again. But if I was a local, I could just burn them by booking it twice a week, every week, for 8 weeks. That is $16,000 in free play. I could convert and leave. Sure, they might figure it out sooner than 60 days. And 100% my offers would go away during the next cycle. But I could then pull the scam on the next non-locals casino that was sending me a "tourist" based offer.

And not being combative at all. But your Win/loss would be mostly useless to another casino. Like I pointed out already, they don't look at such things in aggregate. MGM would have no way of knowing if you did $100K (or whatever you show) in one night. Or in total over 50 drop in visits through out all of 2023.

 

For what its worth, I have had the reverse happen to me in Vegas. I stayed at Green Valley Ranch once, and played pretty solid. As much or more than I do on the Strip. And my offers were just horrible compared to my Strip offers. I asked my host there why, and that I wouldn't waste 3 nights out of my next trip, for 25% of the comp value I get staying elsewhere in town. And she said their offers cater to the more frequent guests. And that the overall value is higher than the Strip, when you consider the weekly dining credits, weekly slot tournaments, weekly gifts, weekly raffles, weekly points multipliers ETC.

A bunch of smaller things to encourage you to drop in and play more frequently. Add all of those up, and its a better overall return for your play. But someone like me flying in from Chicago, simply couldn't take advantage of all those to get any value out of it. I couldn't show up on Monday/Wednesday/Friday to collect each piece of my frying pan set I had offers for LOL

They don't cater to out of town players. I am sure they have weighted offers some for OOT. Given me slightly better than their locals in certain categories. But still not as good as the Strip, which comps me as a tourist that will be confined to their property for at least 3 days. And needs to entice me over their competition, that is doing the same.

 

I recently spoke to my host about this and she confirmed they treat locals terribly. If I were local I would definitely leave MGM and go elsewhere, at least after I used up my ridiculous accumulated comps.