LVCVA alters ad campaigns

Adrienne Packer

Thursday, Sept. 20, 2001 | 11:15 a.m.

Recognizing they must resume advertising to keep Las Vegas' economy from plummeting further, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority officials are planning a more sensitive campaign strategy.

"There comes a time when you have to go back on the air. It's a delicate situation," said Rob Powers, spokesman for the LVCVA. "We're doing what we have to do to bring people in and not offend people's sensibilities."

The LVCVA pulled its aggressive ad campaigns last Tuesday after terrorists struck New York City and Washington, D.C., presumably killing upward of 5,000 residents.

Powers said the message in advertisements that will begin appearing in the next two weeks will veer from the old commercials that touted Las Vegas as a 24-hour town ripe for partiers.

How much it will change, however, has not been determined.

"We're walking a fine line," Powers said. "We can't leave people with the perception you're unaware of anything that is going on. The message will change to subtly reflect what happened."

The LVCVA will not air commercials on the East Coast and will concentrate on its two most popular markets in the west -- Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Officials are looking back to studies conducted during the Persian Gulf War that showed residents who traveled visited destinations fairly close to their home. Los Angeles residents might be willing to take advantage of the four-hour drive and Northern Californians willing to book a one-hour flight because of lowered hotel room rates on the Las Vegas Strip.

"When word of mouth gets out that rates have dropped, that will be factor in people's decisions as well," Powers said. "It's going to be a tough few months, there's no way to dance around that. We will rebound, we always have."

Powers said advanced room bookings for this weekend are so far up from last weekend when only 60 percent of the Las Vegas Strip's rooms were booked. The occupancy rate is typically in the 90 percent range.

The LVCVA plans to conduct a study about travelers' perceptions of Las Vegas in terms of safety. The organization's aggressive ad campaigns overseas has benefits and disadvantages -- they bring more visitors to Las Vegas, but also bring more attention to the city, making it more vulnerable.

"We are doing research to find out what people's attitudes are," Powers said. "My guess is that the issue isn't with the safety in Las Vegas but air safety, that's stating the obvious."