INTEL: If it’s spring, travelers think Las Vegas

The travel website Kayak recently looked at more than 1 billion searches for travel throughout March, and Las Vegas was determined the most popular destination by search share. Flight and hotel searches were the most popular for Sin City, with an average airfare costing $300 and average hotel rates coming in at $139.

After Las Vegas, Florida dominated the list of top destinations.

Orlando’s average airfare is $302, Miami’s clocked in at $377 and Fort Lauderdale’s is $303 for the month.

Trendwise, Puerto Vallarta stood out. Compared with the weeks before and after the spring break season, the Mexican beach city’s search share increased by 130 percent. Getting there costs an average of $633.

And the South by Southwest festival jacked Austin, Texas’ search share up 127 percent. Average airfare for those heading to the festival is $375.

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Another local business is looking to Kickstarter for funding help.

Petroglyph, a Las Vegas-based game development studio, is using Kickstarter to possibly fund its World War II action strategy game, “Victory.” The crowdfunding campaign reveals game details that “Victory” is an online, team-based tactical combat game starting with the North African campaign of World War II.

The game already is at the playable prototype stage, but now Petroglyph is now reaching out to strategy gaming enthusiasts for their support and collaboration to take the game from concept to reality.

Petroglyph, founded in 2003, has developed award-winning strategy games for a decade.

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Rising tides float all boats.

Nearby, Grand Canyon West reported a record 5,292 visitors on Dec. 27 when the area’s tourism numbers were released in early March. The area celebrates its 25th anniversary on April 20 and expects visitation numbers that month to surpass its December 2012 record.

An anniversary celebration event for April is being planned.

Grand Canyon Resort Corp. is wholly owned by the Hualapai tribe and is located in Peach Springs, Ariz. In 1988, the Hualapai Indian tribe, which has occupied the land since 1883, purchased the corporation, which has welcomed millions of visitors each year to tour the area, including the nearby lodge, ranch, river rafting company and Grand Canyon West. To further increase tourism in the area, the Hualapai built the Grand Canyon Skywalk in 2007. The Skywalk is a glass, horseshoe-shaped bridge that enables visitors to walk beyond the canyon walls at Grand Canyon West, suspending them 4,000 feet above the riverbed.

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As the 2013 Nightclub & Bar Convention hits Las Vegas next week, Cee Lo Green can add another notch to his rhinestone-studded belt.

Green was selected to be this year’s welcome wagon, an honor of sorts that has been passed on for the last few years by Nightclub & Bar’s head honcho, Jon Taffer. The celebrity welcome wagon is not only a flashy way to kick things off at the convention, it’s a way to get more media images of the show into magazines and newspapers and on every website that will have them.

Last year Taffer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that those few moments when a celebrity is opening his show floor are worth their weight in gold.

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