RSS FeedVegas visitors on the rise
The Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority has released its 2006 numbers. Here’s a quick summary from the LVRJ:
Las Vegas attracted a record number of tourists in 2006 despite losing 581 rooms from its hotel inventory, the first such decrease since 1992.
Las Vegas had 38.9 million visitors in 2006, up slightly less than 1 percent from 2005.
The increase came despite the number of hotel rooms decreasing to 132,605.
The last time the number of hotel rooms dropped, the inventory lost 356 rooms and finished the year at 76,523.
Even though it lost hotel rooms, the region managed to increase the number of visitors by boosting the occupancy rate to 89.7 percent, up half of 1 percent from the previous year.
“That really paints the picture of why Las Vegas has been successful,” Kevin Bagger, director of Internet marketing and research for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, told the authority board Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a report by Gov. Jim Gibbons’ transition team that looked at the areas of tourism and gaming was released late Tuesday and questioned the continued need for the convention authority. The report, dated Monday, was posted on the governor’s Web site and proposed that the collection of room taxes, which fund the convention authority, be eliminated or rolled back.
MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said casino companies and the authority contribute to the higher visitation by working hard to fill hotel rooms during slow times.
Feldman said MGM Mirage, which has 36,000 rooms in Las Vegas, urges managers of smaller conventions to book rooms during slow periods and commit to multi-year deals.
“It helps us fill the gaps,” Feldman said.
Convention traffic in 2006 increased 2.3 percent, to 6.3 million visitors, with a non-gaming economic impact of $8.2 billion, up 7.6 percent from 2005.
Here are some more interesting tidbits from the executive summary (pdf file):
For 2006, the average daily room rate was $119.66; it hit a low of $104.19 in July and a high of $134.78 in October.
Convention room nights are about 32% of total room nights–thanks, business travelers, for “driving midweek occupancy.”
An average of 40,383 cars each day come to Las Vegas from I-15. Thanks, Southern California. Double thanks to the Yermo agricultural inspection area.
Gaming revenue on the Strip is up 10.9% from last year, while Downtown is down by 3.6%.
Hotel occupancy rates are way higher than motel occupancy rates. For the year, hotels were 93.2% full, while otels squeaked by with 65.2% occupancy. Bottom line: if you stay in a motel, odds are that one of the rooms adjacent to you will be empty, so party on.
Worthless factoid that nonetheless might impress:with 132,605 rooms available, it would take you 363 years and about 3 months to sleep in each of them, if you slept in a different one every night.
Barring dramatic medical breakthroughs, you’d be dead before you got 60 years or so into it at the most, so if you’re going to try, start on the Strip and save the cheap motels for last, because you’ll never get to them. Of course, they’ll probably have imploded and rebuilt each hotel nine times by the time you finish (I’m assuming an average hotel lifespan of 40 years, which might be a little generous), so there really wouldn’t be much point.
Posted in life in vegas
