In Business Las Vegas, September 21st, 2007
While July's visitor volume may have appeared sluggish, local tourism officials say a quirk in the calendar masks the whole story and occupancy rates for the month were the best ever for a July.
Just as a favorable calendar improved June's visitor volume and July gaming revenue, visitor volume in July was no blockbuster because of the way weekend dates lined up.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported 3.4 million tourists visited Southern Nevada
in July, just 0.2 percent more than the total reported in July 2006.
But the brightest spotlight on the LVCVA's monthly report was reserved for strengths shown in occupancy and average daily room rates.
The 92 percent occupancy rate was up 0.9 points from July 2006.
Kevin
Bagger, the LVCVA's director of Internet marketing and research
, said in only six of the last 30 Julys had occupancy rates exceeded 90 percent.
The best occupancy rate ever achieved for a month was 95.8 percent in March 1996, he said.
The average daily room rate climbed by a double-digit percentage for the sixth time in seven months in 2007, with the rate up 13 percent in July to $117.76. For the year, the average is up 13.4 percent to $135.49.
But other statistics seemed lackluster because of the tough comparison between months.
A year ago, July had five Saturdays and Sundays and June 2007 had the same calendar quirk. As a result, July's visitor volume didn't appear as strong as the five-weekend month a year ago.
And weekend tourists were the ones who carried the load. Convention attendance was off a whopping 33.1 percent in July to 262,560.
There were only 1,208 conventions in the month, 21.1 percent fewer than in July 2006. But weekend occupancy was up 1.7 points to 96.1 percent.
Visitor volume trends in
Laughlin
and
Mesquite
continued their current direction, which is good news for
Mesquite
but bad news for
Laughlin
.
The volume in
Mesquite
was up 9.1 percent compared with July 2006 to 138,332 people. In
Laughlin
, volume was down 6.6 percent to 274,693 visitors.
Average daily room rates in
Mesquite
soared 47.2 percent to
Laughlin
's rate was flat at $70.35, while $42.27.
