Activities

For our open house, we had to think of activities that fit our casino theme and also stayed within the budget. We also needed a way for guests to register their emails. Here is the initial guest agenda:

• Sign-in table available throughout the event. We will ask faculty to stop by and attend the event if they are available to do so. Faculty can answer any questions that attendees may have/give them information about our program. We will send an email to the staff in the HTM department asking them to come.

• Several tables will be set up in the Atrium Room where students can participate in card games including slapjack, BS, Euchre, spoons. More games can be considered. On each table there will be a set of instructions for those who do not know how to play. Students in our class will be at each table to help with any confusion.

• There will be a nacho bar and pretzel station that will be available throughout the course of the open house that students can enjoy and take back to their table

• We will have prizes available, and they are given based on the winners of the card games.

• The roulette wheel will also be at a table for students to participate in.

• The atmosphere of our open house will be dim lit, we want it to feel like a real casino.

• Having multiple tables throughout the room will encourage students to meet different people in the profession as well as other students who are in the program.

• Communication is key.

• Tournament: “Spoons Tournament”: Students will be able to participate in a spoon’s tournament, where the winner will receive a $20 gift card to Crumbl Cookie and the runner up will receive a $15 Gift Card to Buffalo Wild Wings

• “Spin the Roulette Wheel”- Prizes will be offered on our roulette wheel including $10 Chipotle gift card, $10 Panera gift card, and a $10 gift card to Starbucks.

• Hospitality Trivia (played once during event) – question students on trivia about the hospitality industry, ask 10-15 questions. They will write their answers on a piece of paper and the student with the most right answers will receive a gift card of $20.00 to Uccello’s

• Offering multiple gift cards to several popular locations will help incentivize students to come to our event. Marketing this on our posters and announcements will also help with attendance.

There is a large portion of this proposal that ended up changing. First of all, we were not allowed to offer gift cards as prizes, so instead we bought some cheap prizes to give away at only the roulette wheel. These prizes included candy, bottles of bubbles, casino themed cups, and temporary tattoos. Our client also ended up bringing some more prizes last minute which included some hospitality and tourism management tote bags and some notebooks.

Secondly, we did not do the spoons tournament. Because this was an open house, we didn't want to have any events that only happened once at a certain time because not all of our guests would be able to enjoy it. Instead, we offered the spoons game along with the other games at the tables for people to play at any time with anyone. There was also slapjack and euchre available.

Thirdly, we changed how we were going to do the trivia. The original plan was to make a trivia quiz on Kahoot that would have lots of questions and would only be played once during the event. This leads to the same issue as the spoons tournament where we didn't want an event within out event. To fix this issue, we made the quiz shorter and planned on running it every 10 to 15 minutes.

Although this was our plan for the quiz, it did not work out at the event. We didn't have a person running the quiz at all times, so none of or guests knew it was an option, therefore we never used it.

The rest of the activities were much more successful than the trivia quiz. Some of my classmates would start playing card games which made guests feel more comfortable joining their game if they came alone. We also offered the challenge of stacking a card tower which was very popular with our guests.

The budget for activities was $83.99, but they ended up spending $84.37. This was against the rules, but I'm not sure if anything was done about it. All of the decks of cards and the roulette wheel were donated, so this money was used to buy the prizes. These included the candy, bottles of bubbles, casino themed cups, and temporary tattoos.