About 300,000 people visited the Strip for some or all of the NFL Draft last weekend.
More important for Vegas tourism officials: the 10 million television viewers. They saw throngs of jersey-wearing fans having a great time on and near the Strip.
Lori Nelson-Kraft, an executive with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said “the city looked spectacular,” which served as its own advertisement for Las Vegas.
“We had two events that we hosted,” Nelson-Kraft said. “One was the in-person event, which allowed fans to interact with the NFL and have Las Vegas as its backdrop. Secondly, it was a made-for-TV event and the exposure, throughout the nation, was a huge marketing coup. We were able to really show off Las Vegas.”
The extra bodies in town served as a tailwind for Las Vegas’ ongoing economic recovery from the doldrums of the pandemic.
About 3.3 million people visited Las Vegas in March, which was up 50% from the same month in 2021, but still down 10% from March 2019, before the onset of the pandemic.
Much of that missing 10% is from two areas — convention business and international travel, but both sources seem to hold promise for the duration of 2022. In March, according to statistics from the Clark County Department of Aviation, about 154,000 international travelers came to Las Vegas.
That’s down significantly from the 305,000 who visited from other countries in March 2019, but up nearly 800% from March 2021, and Harry Reid International Airport has been gradually adding back international flights in recent months.
“International travel is a piece that is important to helping meetings and conventions recover, but it’s also important to our overall visitation since it comprises about 15% of our annual visitation,” Nelson-Kraft said. “From an air service development standpoint, we’re welcoming non-stop service from 15 different carriers to 16 different international destinations. We’re getting those seats back. By the summer, we should see more improvement there.”
After the pandemic hit, the LVCVA was forced to close its international marketing and sales offices, but they’re starting to come back. In recent months, Nelson-Kraft said, the authority reopened offices in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
“We’re proactively working in that area,” Nelson-Kraft said. “There’s a couple of travel restrictions still in place and we could use some improvement in visa processing wait times, but we’re getting there. We’re building momentum.”
On the convention business side, executives from MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment expressed positivity this week during separate quarterly earnings calls.
Caesars CEO Tom Reeg said “group revenue pace is strong” for the remainder of the year for Caesars meetings facilities in Las Vegas. He added that Caesars has more than 150 future events booked for Las Vegas.
MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle said midweek hotel business — generally considered a good metric to gauge the health of the convention industry — in Las Vegas has been improving in recent months.
“Our occupancy is still behind 2019, but there’s a growing group base, which will allow us to ramp for the remainder of the year,” Hornbuckle said. “We expect our convention room nights to reach 90% of 2019 levels during the back half of 2022.”