July’s Las Vegas visitation numbers: Better than June, but still weak

The convention attendance goose eggs are continuing to pile up for Las Vegas.

The city in July recorded its fourth straight month of zero attendance for conventions, meetings and trade shows due to health and safety precautions imposed by the state to fight off the coronavirus pandemic, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said Thursday.

Without any conventioneers, visitor volume fell to 1.438 million for the month — better than in June, but still 61 percent less than in July 2019.

For the fourth straight month, every tourism indicator monitored by the LVCVA was in negative territory.

1.1M June visitors

In June, about 1.1 million people visited Southern Nevada.

Citywide occupancy was off 48.6 points to 42.5 percent for the month, the average daily room rate was down 17.8 percent to $104.39 a night and the number of room nights occupied fell 61.1 percent to 1.633 million. The only indicator that wasn’t down by double-digit percentages was average daily highway auto traffic, down 9.9 percent to 122,299 a day. The Nevada Department of Transportation said that total is for all major highways leading into Las Vegas and includes local traffic and vehicles that are passing through on the way to somewhere else.

The LVCVA said the lack of convention visitors is what’s causing the biggest drain on visitor volume. LVCVA research determined that weekend occupancy in July was 54.4 percent, but midweek occupancy was at 36.9 percent. Occupancy percentages are based on the number of available rooms, which the LVCVA has calculated at 123,684 for the month with several resorts still closed. That’s 16.9 percent below the usual inventory of 148,789 rooms.

The visitor volume in Laughlin was off 47.6 percent to 95,500 while total occupancy was at 46 percent — 29 points below the 75 percent recorded in July 2019 — and the average daily room rate $64.68, which was 14.2 percent higher than a year ago.

The LVCVA couldn’t calculate volume and occupancy in Mesquite because there is insufficient hotel data because of the pandemic.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.