Almost 2.9 million tourists descended on Las Vegas in May, pushing visitation levels up by double digits for the month.
Southern Nevadan visitation, hotel room occupancy and rates, revenue per available rooms and number of room nights all saw a healthy boost from April to May. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), those numbers were short of pre-Covid levels, with tourism down 22 percent from May 2019. But there’s no surprise there, as the pandemic threw Nevada into lockdown, turned the Las Vegas into a virtual ghost town and left the famous Strip almost empty of traffic.
Those bleak days are thankfully over. More than 3.5 million passengers passed through McCarran International Airport in May, reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and traffic on major highways in the vicinity averaged about 137,000 vehicles per day.
In other key markers, hotel occupancy reached 70.9 percent of 2019 levels, up 5.3 percentage points over April’s 65.6 percent rate. Weekend occupancy came to 87.8 percent, within 9 percentage points of May 2019 levels, the LVCVA said.
The momentum slowed a bit in June, with visitor traffic to the Strip down an estimated 27 percent compared to June 2019, but that’s an improvement over the shortfalls in April and May, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli. If the spend per patron trends hold steady, Santarelli expects the Strip to “experience robust gross-gaming-revenue growth” compared to June 2019.
And while drive-in traffic to regional markets slowed a bit in June, the Strip was still jumping, reported Newsbreak.com, with demand showing no sign of slowing in July.
“These figures and Nevada’s recent release lead us to believe the older core customer has returned, with a portion of the younger unrated player sticking around as other entertainment options return,” said Truist analyst Barry Jonas.
As for the July 4 weekend, a McCarran airport spokesman told the Review-Journal the number of inbound air traffic was within 5 percent of the holiday total in 2019. In 2018 and 2019, about 330,000 people visited Las Vegas during the holiday weekend and spent more than $235 million.
LVCVA spokeswoman Lori Nelson-Kraft said the Fourth of July weekend was especially meaningful this year, “now that we’re fully reopened with the return of beloved live shows, concerts and an array of ‘Only Vegas’ experiences for our visitors to enjoy.”
