LV headed for 34 mil. visitors this year

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 1999 | 11:50 a.m.

Las Vegas is on track to bring in a record 34 million visitors this year, up 10 percent from the 30.6 million who came here in 1998, the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority said today.

Visitor volume jumped 10.1 percent in August, to 2,962,887 people, from August 1998, the LVCVA said.

Through Aug. 31, visitor volume for the year is up 10.1 percent as well.

"Las Vegas continues to experience its largest percentage increases in visitor volume in five years," the LVCVA said.

Average hotel and motel occupancy in August was 90.5 percent, up from 89.2 percent in the year-ago month. Nationwide, occupancy rates in other major U.S. cities average 64 percent.

"What makes that especially noteworthy is that Las Vegas has more than 11,000 addition rooms to fill than in August 1998," said LVCVA President Manny Cortez.

With the opening of the Paris Las Vegas hotel-casino in September, Las Vegas now has more than 120,000 hotel and motel rooms.

Though convention attendance in August was down 8 percent from a year ago, it is up 12.6 percent for the year to date.

The visitor increases include higher passenger traffic at McCarran International Airport, where volume was up 13.1 percent in August from a year ago, to 2.9 million passengers. Airline passenger traffic through August was up 10.3 percent, to more than 22 million passengers.