Mexican tourist visitation to Vegas up 50 percent, LVCVA wants more

Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2000 | 11:22 a.m.

With the number of Mexican tourists to Las Vegas already growing at nearly a 50 percent clip this year, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority got a look at an initiative to improve ground transportation from south of the border.

Carol Sanger told LVCVA board members Tuesday that the CANAMEX Corridor Project not only would work to develop a continuous four-lane highway between Mexico City and Edmonton, Alberta, through Las Vegas, but it would work to enhance trade and telecommunications infrastructure in the five U.S. states traversed by the route.

Sanger is executive director of the CANAMEX Corridor Project for the Arizona Department of Transportation. A 10-member coalition of representatives from the five states in the corridor -- Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Montana -- meets quarterly to discuss policy plans and financing strategies. The governors of the five states appointed representatives to the coalition last year.

Nevada has the shortest section of the route -- about 100 miles -- from Hoover Dam to Las Vegas, then north on I-15 to Mesquite.

One of Nevada's representatives is Tom Skancke, who has a consultant contract with the LVCVA to keep the board apprised of improvements on Interstate 15, particularly in California.

Skancke gave an update on the I-15 widening project between Barstow and Victorville, Calif., then gave way to Sanger, who described the CANAMEX Corridor.

The key goal of the CANAMEX project is to improve the main highway system along the route. From south to north, the route includes Interstate 19 between the Mexican border and Tucson, Interstate 10 from Tucson to Phoenix, U.S. 93 between Phoenix and Las Vegas and I-15 from Las Vegas to the Canadian border.

Sanger said the corridor states are at a federal funding disadvantage since the five states only have 14 representatives in Congress.

South of the border, the highway is four lanes for 86 percent of the route and serves Nogales, Hermosillo, Culiacan, Guadalajara and Mexico City. In Canada, the route travels through Coutts, Calgary and Edmonton in the province of Alberta.

Sanger said Arizona has shown its commitment to the corridor by contributing to the construction of a four-lane bridge over the Colorado River near Hoover Dam, part of a project to bypass the dam on U.S. 93. It also plans to upgrade U.S. 93, a project expected to be completed by 2006.

The link between Phoenix and Las Vegas is important to the local economy because most of the route is on a treacherous two-lane road. Improvements on U.S. 93 not only would provide better transportation between Las Vegas and a Arizona's largest population center, but it would also improve the link to Mexico.

And Mexico has turned into one of Las Vegas' top growth markets.

Rafael Villanueva, an international sales representative for the LVCVA who concentrates on Latin American markets, said visitation from Mexico is growing at a rate of between 48 percent and 50 percent, to more than 300,000 visitors a year.

Villanueva said those visitation statistics are based exclusively on passenger counts on nonstop flights from Mexico to Las Vegas and don't count visitors who drive to border cities, then fly to Las Vegas or people who drive the entire distance. Villanueva said traffic is heavy on flights between San Diego and Las Vegas and much of it is attributable to Mexicans who drive to, then fly from San Diego.

Direct service from Mexico has yielded most of the increases.

AeroMexico this year began offering nonstop flights daily from Hermosillo to Las Vegas while Mexicana Airlines has Thursday and Sunday flights to Las Vegas from Guadalajara. Villanueva also said charter traffic is heavy from two major population centers, Mexico City and Monterey.

Villanueva attributes the increase in traffic to an improving Mexican economy that is enabling more people to travel. He also said it is a popular misconception of many who believe most of the Mexican population is too poor to travel because they see poverty when they go to Mexico's border cities.

He said, in fact, many Mexican travellers will only book rooms in Las Vegas' top resorts.

"Even if you assume that only the top 10 percent of Mexico's population is wealthy enough to travel, that's 10 percent of 97 million people," Villanueva said. "And if we can get 10 percent of that 9.7 million, we'd be doing very well."

Villanueva said the LVCVA has increased its marketing in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina in a bid to increase Latin American traffic to the city. The first nonstop charter flight from Brazil is arriving in Las Vegas this evening. A Varig Airlines charter arrives from Sao Paulo at around 6 p.m.

Increasing visits from Mexico is part of the LVCVA's international strategic plan, said Rossi Ralenkotter, the agency's vice president of marketing. He said not only could the CANAMEX Corridor Project increase tourist visits, but it could also improve the movement of products to the city to supply resorts as well as participate in conventions.

But the movement of products in trucks on the highways leading to Las Vegas also represents potential problems for the city and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a member of the LVCVA board, inquired about legislating how big rigs use Nevada's highways.

Goodman said truckers seem to stay in the right lane except when they pass in California, but in Nevada "they're all over the road."

Skancke told Goodman he would research what laws exist for truck travel in California and possibly lobby for similar legislation in Nevada.

Skancke said construction is continuing on additional traffic lanes between Barstow and Victorville, Calif., a traditional choke point on the route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He said truck traffic would only intensify on I-15 with the increased use of Victorville's freight airport, which now has six nonstop cargo flights a week coming from Japan.

And, if an airport is developed 30 miles south of Las Vegas in the Ivanpah Valley as planned, that would increase I-15 traffic as well, he said.

Skancke also reported that $16.5 million has been appropriated to improve the highway between Needles, Calif., and Laughlin. The highway will have four lanes of traffic, turn bays and shoulders.