Chumash Casino Resort Cuts Costs and Boosts Ticket Sales With Custom Visus Ticketing Solution

SANTA YNEZ, Calif. — Chumash Casino Resort has streamlined its digital operations and reduced overhead by partnering with Visus to create a custom online ticketing application integrated directly into its website.

The custom-tailored system preserves a cohesive online experience for venue guests and delivers significant cost savings to both the resort and its patrons. By eliminating reliance on third-party ticketing fees, the resort recovered its investment in the new technology in under a year.

The Chumash Casino Resort is an AAA four-diamond resort in the Santa Ynez Indian Reservation near Solvang, California. Along with its popular gaming area, 320-room hotel, spa, and dining, the resort also presents a wide variety of concerts, shows, tournaments, and sporting events.

Visus is an AI, data, and cloud consulting firm and a Microsoft Solutions Partner. Visus has spent more than a decade building and supporting technology for tribal gaming.

“The mission to eliminate the third-party ticketing service and bring all ticketing activities in-house was an extension of a website redesign project Visus undertook with us," said Michael Armenta, senior marketing manager at Chumash Casino Resort.   

Previously, when a visitor clicked to buy tickets to an event, they were taken to the third-party ticketing agency's website, creating an inconsistent online experience and disconnecting customers from the resort's marketing communications.   

"Our partnership with Visus has opened the door to almost unlimited possibilities for how we can optimize practices in every way: front of the house, back-end management, and the customer experience with our brand," Armenta said. "We wanted our new website to be all-encompassing so our customers could come to one place to complete everything they wanted to do. And we wanted our marketing professionals to maintain control of site visitors' online experience and keep them engaged with all of our offerings. Our staff could not do that once customers went offsite to make a ticket purchase."   

The arrangement with the ticketing agency created additional challenges for the resort's marketing professionals. If an upcoming event required changes, such as seat layout or pricing, marketers had to email the ticketing agency, request the changes, and then wait, sometimes for several days. It was also an expensive endeavor.

"When we calculated the annual total our customers were paying in additional fees above and beyond our ticket prices, as well as the amount our business was paying the agency to sell tickets to our customers, the benefits of having our own ticketing solution became very compelling," Armenta said. "When we factored in the advantages of regaining control of back-end management and front-end user experience, it became a priority objective for us. As always, our partners at Visus listened closely to our ideas in collaborative brainstorming sessions. They created a technology solution that perfectly fits our needs."   

Visus designed and deployed a custom ticketing application for Chumash Casino Resort that gives the resort's marketing team full control of ticketing activities, maintains a cohesive online experience for customers, and saves money for the business and its customers. The business saved money by eliminating its dependency on third-party ticketing services and paid for the new solution in less than one year.   

"I appreciate the fact that the Visus team is very thorough in their research," said Wayne Hurte, executive director of marketing at Chumash Casino Resort. "They take the time to understand our business and our needs during the discovery process, and they communicate clearly with us about project status through every stage of development. Once the system was deployed, they remained engaged to ensure it works the way we want it to."   

"The ticketing solution Visus created for us has been especially successful because it dramatically reduces costs, not just for us, but for our customers as well since they no longer pay a third-party fee for tickets," Hurte said. "Money we were giving to the third-party service now goes directly to the bottom line for our marketing department to apply to promotional projects."   

The custom ticketing application is integrated into a new website that Visus designed and deployed for Chumash Casino Resort. It is part of a plan to make the resort's marketing team more self-sufficient in delivering information and promotional content without help from the technical services department or outside professionals.   

"Viewers to our website can click on Entertainment in the user-friendly navigation links that Visus designed for the site," Armenta said. "From there, they can view all our upcoming concerts and events. When they click Buy Tickets, they remain on our site and are directed to our ticketing engine, which continues to guide them along the path to a purchase. It looks and feels consistent with the rest of the web experience we present."   

Armenta said the Visus solution provides his team with back-end control of ticket sales while automating many tasks. Marketing users can manage details behind the scenes without help from technology experts. 

The Visus solution lets marketers design custom show floors for any event, from a traditional concert setting to a runway stage for a fashion show or ringside viewing for a boxing match. Visus also created an algorithm that automatically identifies the best available seats in the house and gives customers full control to make selections based on factors such as price range and preferred seating location.   

"Along with creating custom solutions for us, Visus also helps us navigate issues in our own technology," Hurte said. "We have a multi-faceted business with many different information systems. Visus makes valuable recommendations about how to keep our technology performing optimally. They are trusted partners in our business.

"Visus designed a custom solution for us from scratch. The Visus team always takes the time to understand our business, the way we work, and our processes and systems. This solution is much more valuable to us than a packaged system because it targets the unique needs of our business. That speaks to the value of having a long-term partner."   

Visus created comprehensive reports that provide full visibility into ticketing activities, helping managers analyze the success of entertainment events. The Visus team also developed a mobile phone app that ushers and other event staff can use to help prevent fraud by identifying reused tickets.   

"The ability of the Visus team to listen to our ideas in collaborative sessions and then suggest and deploy the right technology elevates our concepts beyond what we initially envisioned," Armenta said. "They always have the best interests of our business in mind."

Building on that foundation, Visus now helps tribal gaming organizations put AI to work on their

own data, such as giving marketing and operations teams the ability to ask questions of their

ticketing and event data in plain English and get results and graphs based on their question, all within a secure, private Microsoft environment.

"Chumash has been a true partner for many years, and the ticketing platform shows what is possible when technology is built around how a business actually works and needs," said Michael Daoud, founder and CEO of Visus. "That same approach is what we bring to AI: start with your data, keep it secure, and solve the problems that matter most to your team or for your customers.”

For more information on Chumash Casino Resort, visit their website. For more information on Visus, visit their website.