Bill Bembenek remembers a time, not long ago, when the biggest challenge facing Pala Casino Spa & Resort was keeping up with demand.
The casino will celebrate its 10th anniversary beginning this month, and for the first seven years or so, growth was explosive and guests were flocking to the northern San Diego County casino and resort, owned by the Pala tribe.
“For the first seven years, the challenge was just keeping up with the business that was coming through the doors,” says Bembenek, the facility’s CEO. “We were experiencing tremendous growth in what I now believe was an overstimulated market.”
As the later years of the decade progressed, Pala began to feel the effects of a deepening recession. Customer traffic dwindled as more area residents opted for cheaper entertainment options instead of a weekend away. The revenue bubble that had carried Pala’s growth since its opening burst, and Bembenek was left searching for answers to the problem of how to stimulate business under difficult economic circumstances.
“As the economy slowed, we quickly came to the conclusion that the companies that would come out of the recession were the companies that took this as an opportunity to capitalize on the future,” he says. “Guests have a decision to make when they come to a property like ours. They spend disposable income that they don’t have to spend, so we as an organization have to be prepared not only through the recession but after the recession. We needed to capitalize on the idea that when a person makes a decision to spend disposable income, Pala is at the top of their mind.”
The way to make Pala stand out, Bembenek decided, was to focus on delivering an exceptional customer experience. And the way to make customers remember their experience at Pala was to create happy, loyal employees to interface with those customers. It required a cultural shift for the entire 2,000-employee organization.
“All the casino properties in California have nice facilities, slot machines, blackjack tables and good food,” he says. “But service was the impetus for our cultural direction. The most sound position we could put ourselves in was with an emphasis on service, and that starts with our team members.”
