Las Vegas visitor count up 7.2 percent in January

Tuesday, March 28, 2000 | 10:53 a.m.

Nearly 2.8 million people visited Las Vegas in January, a 7.2 percent increase over January 1999, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported Monday.

Though Las Vegas posted increases in all measured categories, the growth rate was slightly lower than the double-digit percentage jumps seen in 1999. Las Vegas visitor counts rose 10.5 percent for all of 1999, to 33.8 million.

The largest January increase came in convention visitors. Though the number of conventions in January declined from 302 in January 1999 to 271 this year, total convention attendance rose 12.4 percent, to 436,618. Conventions had a non-gaming economic impact of $476 million on the Las Vegas economy in January, the LVCVA reported.

Clark County's gaming revenues rose 7.5 percent on the month, to $721 million. That's below the 13.6 percent annual growth pace set in 1999. Meanwhile, air passenger traffic at McCarran International Airport increased 6.8 percent in January, to 2.7 million passengers.

Though visitor counts were up, hotel occupancy actually declined during the month, to 82.6 percent. However, the opening of four major resorts in 1999 boosted Las Vegas' hotel room inventory by 10 percent since last January.

The largest increase for the month was posted at the Yermo Inspection Station, a key transit point on Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The Yermo station logged nearly 500,000 vehicles in January, up nearly 20 percent from last January.

Though that station is used as a key indicator of tourists travelling to Las Vegas from Southern California by car, an LVCVA analyst cautioned that the Yermo station doesn't break out car traffic from commercial truck traffic.

"It's a combination of the fact that we not only have additional resorts, but that the valley, residentially, is growing," said Kevin Bagger, senior research analyst at the LVCVA.

In Laughlin, visitor counts fell 2.7 percent in January, to 2.7 million. However, gaming revenues in Laughlin increased 2.9 percent, to $49.7 million.