A glimmering domed football stadium in the foreground of the Las Vegas Strip – with the promise of a Super Bowl – in addition to new resort and entertainment projects, will give the city a much-needed tourism boost, the head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority told the Preview 2019 conference Thursday.
LVCVA CEO Steve Hill – who took over the agency last summer – told an audience at the Greater Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s largest annual networking event that Las Vegas visitor volume fell for the second consecutive year in 2018. He attributed the decline to the destination reaching its capacity for visitor growth, at least for the time being.
Hill said tourism numbers will increase during 2020 as new resorts and entertainment venues come online. He highlighted the under-construction $1.8 billion Las Vegas Stadium, that will become home to the re-located NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders in 2020, as one component that will help the city grow visitation in the next decade.
Marc Badain, president of the current Oakland Raiders, said he expects the 65,000-seat stadium – located on west side of Interstate 15 across from Mandalay Bay with a view of the Las Vegas Strip – will host a Super Bowl – the NFL’s premier showcase – as early as 2025.
Badain said the stadium will be home to non-conference college football games, conference championship games, and concerts. Also, large-scale corporate events would bring 40,000 to 50,000 people to the city to use the stadium. For now, companies can only bring 15,000 to 20,000 of their employees, clients and vendor to town for a single event.
“We’re excited about this venue because it’s the final missing piece to all of the infrastructure that is here,” Badain said.
From left to right, Kurt Melien, Kevin Camper, and Marc Badain
Hill told the Preview 2019 audience that Las Vegas attracted 42.1 million visitors in 2018, slightly below the 42.2 million the market attracted in 2017. The high point in visitation for Las Vegas was 42.9 million reached in 2016.
Hill said Las Vegas’ room occupancy for 2018 was 88.2 percent, which is below the 88.7 percent in 2017 and 89.1 percent in 2016. The all-time high was 90.4 percent in both 1996 and 2007.
Convention attendance set its second-highest total ever at 6.5 million, just below the 6.6 million in 2017 when Las Vegas hosted the CONEXPO construction trade show that brought 125,000 visitors. That show will return in 2020 and the LVCVA expects Las Vegas will break its record then.
Room inventory is roughly 148,800 rooms, which has steadily declined since 2013 when it was 150,593. Room renovations and the closure of the Riviera and its 1,700 rooms in 2016 to pave the way for the expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center contributed to the decrease.
With reduced room capacity, revenue per available room (RevPar) – a metric used by analysts to measure profitability – set a record in 2018 at $113.50, Hill said, topping the $112.78 RevPar number in 2017.
In each of the last four years, Las Vegas attracted more than 42 million visitors. Hill said that will be the case again in 2019, However, there won’t be any significant growth until several project projects are completed in 2020.
Hill highlighted the stadium that is scheduled to be reader for the state of the 2020 NFL season, along with MSG Sphere concert venue as part of more than $15 billion in investments underway in the city. The $4 billion, 3,000-room Resorts World Las Vegas and the downtown Las Vegas’ 777-room, multi-billion-dollar Circa Casino Resort are scheduled to open in that timeframe.
“In order to move forward in the market, we really have two choices,” Hill said. “One is to look for opportunities for some of the softer points throughout the year, and the other is to grow.”
Hill said between the Las Vegas Convention Center’s expansion and efforts by hotel-casino industry, Las Vegas is building 3.7 million square feet of new convention and meeting space.
“To put that in perspective, there are only five cities in the United States that have 3.7 million square feet of meeting space,” Hill said. “We have 11.5 million of meeting space here in Las Vegas now. That is a remarkable (investment) and going to take Las Vegas into the next generation of what this city is going to be all about.”
Entertainment will also help boost visitor volume, according to Hill, who hosted a panel discussion on what Las Vegas needs to do to ascend to the global events stage.
Kevin Camper, senior vice president of marketing and sales for Las Vegas Motor Speedway said people come to Las Vegas because it’s a destination for events. He said venues also need to collaborate.
The Speedway hosts two NASCAR races annually, drag racing, the Electric Daisy Carnival and other events totaling 1.4 million customers a year.
“We can have bull riding on a Thursday night, a concert on Friday night, a big UFC fight on Saturday, NASCAR race on Sunday and the Raiders on Sunday or Monday night,” Camper said. “There is nothing like that, especially in this city which is the greatest entertainment city in the world. We will fill every room and then some, but the collaborating long term of having this destination vision is where we need to look.”
Kurt Melien, regional president with Live Nation Entertainment, a global concert promoter, said venues such as the T-Mobile Arena make the city attractive to artists. He said he expects one or two concerts a year at the stadium, which can be held at slower times of the year to draw visitors.
Badain said with 10 Raider games a year, it’s much easier to schedule the venue. He said an NFL franchise will be exciting for Las Vegas since one-third of the attendance will be filled by people from out of town.
“And for leisure travelers coming to Vegas who would most likely leave Sunday, you give them a reason to be here for a third night, and that drives the room revenue” Badain said. “For us to be able to give our customers an incredible experience to be in Vegas for an entire weekend, it’s going to be a massive event for every single home game.”
