A Smartphone Technology On-The-Go

Added 25th Nov 2011
Matt Villano

Mobile On busy weekends in Las Vegas, getting a drink at many bars and nightclubs can be a full-contact sport. First you muscle your way through a crowd to get near the bar. Then you shout your order and hope the bartender hears it right. 
The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino is advancing a different approach. It is enabling customers to use their smartphones to order food and drinks, which are then delivered to their location by a server. The technology, dubbed Kickback, is the flagship product from startup Kickback Mobile. 
Customers download a free app to their smartphones and register with their credit card information. From there, Kickback uses GPS to determine which of seven Hard Rock venues the customer is visiting and pushes menu options accordingly. 
“As long as [customers] have a smartphone, they are part of the community,” says Todd Moreau, VP of food and beverage with Hard Rock. Moreau advocated for the project, working with Hard Rock Director of IT Mike Essig to make it a reality. 
Kickback offers a number of benefits. For customers, it means that ordering drinks no longer requires adventures at the bar. 
Hard Rock gains full integration with its CRM, and a way to track the purchases of big spenders. It also hopes to use Kickback to develop and push promotions based on a customer’s preferences, spending habits or location within the resort, says Kickback Mobile CEO 
Leo Rocco. 
Kickback uses a technology called geo-fencing, which uses a smartphone’s GPS capabilities based on nearby cellular towers to estimate where a customer is located when she places an order. Customers select where the server should deliver the order using a pre-defined list. 
Revelers, take note: Your days of elbowing your way to the bar are almost over.

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