Conflict reduces Internet LV trip bookings

Monday, March 31, 2003 | 10:55 a.m.

A company that tracks last-minute travel bookings on the Internet says Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., are seeing fewer upcoming bookings.

But officials with the two dominant Las Vegas Internet sites say bookings have nearly recovered from a lull that began with the outbreak of war in Iraq.

Site59.com, an Internet company that tracks spontaneous travel, said New York and Washington have vaulted into the top five travel destinations it monitors because Americans are curious to see New York's Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan and the museums of Washington D.C. as well as the Pentagon.

Without giving specific booking numbers, Site59.com said Las Vegas had slid from the No. 7 most booked travel destination six months ago to No. 24 last week. Orlando also slipped.

A company spokeswoman said part of the downturn for Las Vegas could be attributed to the loss of a key travel partner, National Airlines, which discontinued operations in November.

VEGAS.com and LasVegas.com, the top sites that book Las Vegas hotel rooms and tour packages over the Internet, said there were some lulls in bookings immediately after the outbreak of war March 19, but traffic picked up again a week later.

Howard Lefkowitz, president of VEGAS.com, said the site's bookings still haven't completely recovered from the outbreak of war.

"We were off in double-digit percentages right after the war broke out, but now we're down by single-digit percentages," Lefkowitz said Friday without giving specific numbers. "We may not have turned the corner, but we're looking around the corner."

VEGAS.com is a sister company to the Las Vegas Sun.

Susan Wilson, a spokeswoman for LasVegas.com, said that site has about returned to the volume it was experiencing prior to the outbreak of war.

LasVegas.com is controlled by casino operators Park Place Entertainment Corp. and Mandalay Resort Group. The site is leased from a company that also owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Wilson said between March 19 and March 25, LasVegas.com lost about 15 percent of the number of usual visitors it has to the site. In addition to the war outbreak, Wilson said the lack of advertising by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority probably affected visitation to the site.

The LVCVA suspended its "Vegas stories" television ad campaign for a week immediately after the first bombs fell on Baghdad. LVCVA officials said they hesitated briefly to get a feel for how the public perceived the war effort before restarting the campaign. The agency also felt its ad message would have gotten lost among television viewers looking for war news updates.

"People's attention was diverted slightly for about a week, but the numbers came back," Wilson said. "Many people who were loyal to one site or another put things on hold before they came back."

Wilson said it was hard to gauge whether the traffic came back just to book a Las Vegas getaway, or whether people were curious about getting information and tickets for "A New Day," the new Celine Dion show at Park Place's Caesars Palace resort.

"We feel the hiccups of just about everything that happens here," Wilson said. "We even get a bump when an ad campaign is started by VEGAS.com."