The Las Vegas resort industry, open for just 27 days in June, drew a little more than 1 million visitors during the month which also included zero convention attendees.
The visitor volume for the Strip and downtown was down 70.5% from June 2019 when the market attracted more than 3.6 million visitors. The Nevada gaming industry was ordered closed on March 18 by the governor due to the spreading coronavirus pandemic.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority on Friday noted the gradual reopening of properties during June – less than half the Strip was open during the first weekend – along with restrictions on occupancy and amenities that were included in COVID-19 health, safety, cleaning and social distancing guidelines put into play by state gaming regulators.
According to the LVCVA, Southern Nevada averaged just 95,396 available hotel and motel rooms during June, down from 149,627 rooms available a year ago. The average reflected approximately 22,000 rooms – primarily non-gaming hotels and motels – that were available starting June 1. The number grew to roughly 90,000 rooms on June 4 and increased to approximately 115,000 rooms by the end of the month as additional hotel-casinos reopened.
Additional Strip resorts reopened during July. MGM Resorts International, which has nearly a dozen gaming and non-gaming resorts on the Strip, still has two properties closed – Park MGM and The Mirage. Caesars Entertainment has partially reopened six of its nine Strip resorts with Cromwell, Planet Hollywood, and Rio still closed. Penn National Gaming has yet to reopen Tropicana Las Vegas.
Total hotel occupancy reached 40.9% for the month with weekend occupancy coming in at 51.8% and midweek occupancy of 36.5%. The average daily room rates among the open properties reached $104.07, a decline of 13.6%, while revenue per available room (RevPAR) was $42.56, down ‐61.5% compared to a year ago.
“With continued mandated restrictions on group sizes, no measurable convention attendance occurred during the month,” the LVCVA said in note than accompanied the report. Las Vegas attracted 514,000 convention attendees during June 2019.
For the six months of 2020, total Las Vegas visitor volume is down 54% to 9.73 million visitors, which also reflects 106,900 visitors in April and 151,300 visitors in May.
McCarran International Airport saw a 76.6% decline in passengers during June, and passenger volume is down 53.8% for the first six months of the year.
Gaming revenues on the Strip are down 47.9% for 2020 and gaming revenues in downtown Las Vegas are off 45.5%.
Howard Stutz is the executive editor of CDC Gaming Reports. He can be reached at hstutz@cdcgaming.com. Follow @howardstutz on Twitter.
