From Casinos To Aircraft Cabins: Marriott And MGM Make Gambling With Miles — Even Inflight — Possible

by Gary Leff on December 14, 2024

With their MGM partnership, Marriott gets a lot of rooms to sell. Over 37,000 in fact. Las Vegas has the biggest hotels! And under CEO Jim Capua, the corporate priority is net rooms growth.

For MGM, they get access to Marriott members. This fills hotel rooms (‘heads in beds’) but more importantly it lets them market to potential gamblers. The Marriott Bonvoy relationship isn’t just for hotel stays, it’s for BetMGM as well. MGM is even spending to incentive this conversion with a 5,000 point signup offer:

New BetMGM users can enroll in Marriott Bonvoy, or link their existing accounts, and receive our best new user offer yet: After creating your account, make a deposit and place your first bet, and receive the entire value back in bonus bets if you don’t win (up to $1,500) – plus, a total of 5,000 Marriott Bonvoy points either way, our gift to you for the holiday season.

BetMGM Rewards points, earned through the program, can be converted to Marriott Bonvoy at 1:1. In some ways I was really surprised when Marriott introduced points-earning for BetMGM. Marriott was always a values-driven company, stemming from the Mormon faith of its founders. When Marriott acquired Starwood, Sheratons received copies of the Book of Mormon.

Of course, Marriotts long offered in-room porn. They stopped offering it only after guests stopped paying for it (because of the ubiquity of free options on the internet). Former CEO Bill Marriott was always conflicted over this.

I’ve always been concerned about (pornographic) movies in rooms. In the next three or four years, we won’t have any more of those. That’s something we’ve had a real problem with because the Church is very, very opposed to pornography, as it should be, and we are for families. But the owners of our hotels were making a lot of money. In fact, the only movies that make any money are pornography.

…It was the right thing to do. The other side of it is if they want that stuff, they can get on the computer. So, the demand for them has gone way down. It was a good time to exit.

Interestingly, Marriott’s in-room porn undermined Provo, Utah obscenity prosecutions because if Mormon company Marriott was showing porn in the community, the material couldn’t violate community standards (and thus become actionable).

A decade ago, I spoke with some folks who were trying to enable gambling with frequent flyer miles. And back then what I told them was that no one would touch it because of reputational concerns. That was true at the time. Things have changed so dramatically!

Since it’s now possible to earn Marriott points gambling, the Overton window has shifted sufficiently that more programs may be open to the revenue possibilities of gambling using frequent flyer miles.

• Programs would offer low-cost redemption. If the value of points for gambling was lower than average redemptions, that’s a win for the program’s economics.
• And gambling service providers would be buying miles to fund member winnings.
• Plus, casinos could offer miles as a gambling incentive. That’s big business.

Did you know that slot machines in the Las Vegas airport have generated $1 billion in revenue? It’s time to legalize inflight gambling. The Department of Transportation studied inflight gambling in 1996, largely concluding it was fine.

At the time a study from the Clinton Administration concluded that airlines could earn $1 million per aircraft per year by offering gambling, $1.6 million in 2020 dollars or $1.3 billion per year for an 800 plane airline. (Airlines have argued that the potential economic impact is even greater than this.) Making flights more profitable means more routes and more flights will be offered. And airlines will want to fly passengers at even lower fares, just like Las Vegas hotels fill rooms at low room rates because they earn revenue from those guests in the casino.

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