The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is projecting visitation to Las Vegas this Labor Day weekend will increase from what turned out to be a disappointing Labor Day in 2010.
Despite national concerns about the economy, stock market gyrations since July 21 and the aftermath of the East Coast hurricane, the LVCVA today projected 291,000 people will visit the nation’s gaming capital this weekend, up 3.6 percent from last year.
Factoring in a 1.4 percent increase in the number of hotel rooms available – from 147,820 to 149,930 – the visitation number is expected to yield citywide hotel occupancy of 91 percent, up 2.2 percentage points.
These visitors are expected to create a nongaming economic impact of $178.7 million, up 3.9 percent from last year.
A factor in the growth forecast appears to be that visitation during 2010’s holiday came in at 281,000 people, 9,000 fewer than projected. That means this year’s forecast is based on an easy comparison.
While the 2011 projection at first glance may appear to be optimistic given events nationwide the past month, LVCVA spokesman Jeremy Handel said it’s actually conservative given visitation trends to Las Vegas this year.
"A number of factors go into projecting visitation trends, including past performance of that particular holiday as well as recent weekend performance for the destination. Having a weekend with 90-plus percent occupancy is not unusual, and our average weekend occupancy through the first half of the year has been 92 percent," Handel said.
He said visitation to Las Vegas through the first six months of 2011 was up 5.1 percent, ahead of projections for the year.
"Inbound airline seat capacity is up from last year and anecdotal input from some of our hotel partners indicates demand remains strong," Handel said.
Travel booker Expedia, in the meantime, weighed in with its own numbers showing that even during the hot summer month of July, Las Vegas topped its list of most-searched destinations.
Expedia said Las Vegas was included in 2.51 million searches, ahead of, in order, New York, San Diego, Orlando, Chicago and San Francisco.
Expedia, in the meantime, today promoted Las Vegas hotel rooms starting at $37 per night.