Jim Murren, once chief executive officer of MGM and now head of Nevada’s COVID-19 Response, Relief and Recovery Task Force is bullish on the recovery and expansion of Las Vegas once the pandemic recedes.
Murren, who left MGM in February to join the task force, told the Las Vegas Sun, “In 2022, I think we’re going to see a very rapid snapback in consumer activity nationwide, particularly in Las Vegas.”
Murren has some experiencing in bouncing back from an economic body blow. He was an executive with MGM—which has ten properties on the Strip—when it recovered from the Great Recession.
According to Murren, “We’re more prepared now than we were in March, which is not to say that we aren’t seeing increased cases. We are in a position now where we have more resources to treat, to trace, and to protect those who are treating those with COVID. We’re in a much better space in terms of PPE (personal protective equipment) and we’ve vastly expanded testing capacity relative to March.”
There is also a better understand of Covid-19. But, “Where we’re still behind is having a robust contact tracing infrastructure in place to track the disease better and treat people more quickly with a tracing mechanism.”
A city as tourist-centric as Las Vegas can’t wait until the arrival of the promised vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna to “jumpstart economic activity here in the Valley,” said Murren. He praises the city’s health protocols as superior to most hospitality companies, but, “[T] here needs to be added protocols put in place to allow us to occupy theaters more fully, stadiums, arenas and convention centers. Until we can do that, we’re going to have the level of revenue activity that we have right now, which is far below what a healthy Las Vegas economy needs.”
