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fter being closed 78 days, the city’s resorts were allowed to reopen June 4, but hotel occupancy has been hurt by capacity restrictions ordered by the state, a downturn in fly-in traffic, and general fear that travelers will contract the virus when visiting.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA)’s figures show all the leading tourism indicators were in negative territory in June, a trend that has been in place since March.
Las Vegas saw 3,607,400 people visit back in June 2019 in comparison to the same month this year, per the LVCVA’s report.
Last June’s total included 514,000 in convention attendance, which was non-existent this June.
Brent Pirosch, director of gaming consulting with the Las Vegas-based Global Gaming Group of CBRE, said he was surprised that the visitor count eclipsed the 1 million mark.
“The June visitation numbers were relatively good considering how challenging air travel is,” Pirosch said. “The total number of passengers was nearly half of what it was in March, where March was effectively just half a month.”
The occupancy rate was calculated at 40.9 percent, compared to 91.7 percent from June 2019, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. The LVCVA broke down Strip occupancy at 40.4 percent, downtown Las Vegas at 36.5 percent, weekend occupancy at 51.8 percent and midweek, 36.5 percent. The city routinely hovers between 70 percent and 90 percent in each of those categories.
The LVCVA broke down Strip occupancy at 40.4 percent, downtown Las Vegas at 36.5 percent, weekend occupancy at 51.8 percent and midweek, 36.5 percent. The city routinely hovers between 70 percent and 90 percent in each of those categories.
Because some resorts continue to be closed — most notably, The Mirage, Park MGM, Planet Hollywood and The Cromwell — the LVCVA calculated occupancy rates based on weighted averages for when rooms were open. It used a base number of 95,396 rooms instead of the nearly 150,000 in the usual inventory. It calculated 22,000 rooms open June 1-3, 90,000 rooms on June 4 and 115,000 late in the month.
The LVCVA also reported that the average daily room rate was down 13.6 percent to $104.07 for the month, with Strip rates averaging $117.62 (off 9.2 percent) and downtown, $58.71 (down 5.6 percent).
Total visitor volume for the first six months of 2020 is off 54 percent to 9.733 million people.
But Pirosch said the gaming win per visitor was stronger than expected.
“The mass market win per visitor, excluding baccarat, was $179 in June – a new record on the Strip,” he said. “We’ve seen this phenomenon in other jurisdictions as well – volume and win are down as the markets recover, but the spend per visitor is quite high. It is encouraging to see the same dynamic in Las Vegas.”
