Vegas visitor count grows

Tuesday, April 13, 2004 | 11:01 a.m.

Las Vegas reported its best-ever February visitor volume, eclipsing records set in the boom year of 2000 and setting the city on track to beat its highest visitor count of 35.8 million set in 2000.

More than 2.9 million people visited Las Vegas in February, a 5.2 percent increase from the same month last year, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported Monday. Visitor statistics were helped by a variety of factors including the fact that this February had an extra day on the calendar for leap year, the Super Bowl was on Feb. 1 rather than in January and Strip casinos reported some February spillover business from Chinese New Year in late January.

About 702,582 people attended conventions in February, an 8.6 percent increase from a year ago. The economic impact of those conventions, not including spending on gambling, rose 10.5 percent to $847.7 million.

The total hotel occupancy rate in February was nearly flat from a year ago at 86.9 percent but the average daily room rate was $92.13, up from $89.70 a year ago.

Airline passenger traffic jumped 13.3 percent to more than 3 million people but average daily auto traffic along I-15 at the California-Nevada border fell 0.7 percent to 34,576 cars.