With a focus on events-oriented tourism bring more young people to Las Vegas, the city has enjoyed a rise in the number of festival grounds and festivals held.
Large events drawing more than 100,000 attendees result in room rates between three and five times that normally charged on the Las Vegas Strip, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Multi-day and multi-week festivals, like the annual Electronic Daisy Carnival and the rotating Rock In Rio, are very popular among the throngs of millennial-age attendees who come to Las Vegas for such events.
And that has local developers working to provide more suitable festival space.
Two primary examples are the Las Vegas Festival Grounds and MGM’s Las Vegas Village outdoor events venue.
When the massive Rock In Rio festival was held in Las Vegas last year, both venues were packed with young concert-goers, as well as those of other ages, to see their favorite musical artists.
Rock In Rio is an annual festival that rotates locations between Brazil, Spain, and Las Vegas. It has a two-week format featuring pop acts one week and rock acts another.
It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors during its duration, most of whom stay for only part of the festival.
Another popular festival, the annual Academy of Country Music’s Party for a Cause, has agreed to perform at the Festival Grounds the next several years, and typically attracts about 55,000 for the three-night event.
SLS Las Vegas is the event’s host hotel, and hotel officials said they obtained about 20 percent more than normal for room rates and about 45 percent increase in food and beverage sales during the event.
The annual Life Is Beautiful festival, likewise, packs the Fremont Street Experience and downtown venues with concert-goers, hungry patrons, and gamblers during its annual fall run.
Officials for Las Vegas Events say such festivals help to promote the particular host areas of the city where they are held, while also marketing Las Vegas and its array of entertainment options to people who otherwise might never come.
