Las Vegas visitation climbing but not yet at prepandemic levels

Midweek hotel occupancy made a comeback in June but still hasn’t reached prepandemic levels, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported Thursday.

The organization that tracks and markets Southern Nevada tourism said midweek occupancy hit 80 percent for the first time since February 2020 — the month before the area’s resorts closed for 78 days in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Weekend occupancy had its fourth consecutive month in excess of 90 percent in June.

But the rate still pales in comparison with the rate from June 2019, when occupancy was 91.7 percent.

Kevin Bagger, vice president of the LVCVA research center, said the comeback is more meaningful considering the inventory of rooms has grown.

“With room inventory reflecting the net impacts of the opening of the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas and Resorts World since the middle of last year, overall hotel occupancy reached 82.7 percent, 6.8 points ahead of last June, but down 9 points vs. June 2019,” he said.

Another key tourism indicator, the average daily room rate, after two consecutive months in excess of $175 a night in April and May, settled back to $156.92 a night in June, 22.7 percent more than in June 2021 and 30.3 percent more than in June 2019.

For the first six months of 2022, the average daily room rate is at $162.60, which is 44.4 percent higher than the first six months of 2021.

Other midyear totals:

• Southern Nevada has seen 18.58 million visitors in the first six months of the year, 37.8 percent ahead of 2021.

• Convention attendance is at 2.469 million people, 514.8 percent ahead of last year’s first six months.

• Occupancy rates are at 76.5 percent for the year, with 88 percent on weekends, 71.6 percent at midweek, 78.9 percent on the Strip and 64.9 percent in downtown Las Vegas.

• Traffic on major highways leading to Las Vegas was flat at 126,161 vehicles a day, and down 2.4 percent to 44,797 vehicles a day on Interstate 15 at the California-Nevada border. Those counts are from the Nevada Department of Transportation, which doesn’t differentiate between tourist and local traffic.

Visitation to Laughlin and Mesquite, both monitored by the LVCVA, continue to struggle.

Laughlin had 109,700 visitors in June, down 2.2 percent from a year ago and 33.9 percent from June 2019. For the first six months of 2022, visitation to the Colorado River community at the southern tip of Nevada is down 0.3 percent to 624,500 from the first six months of 2021.

The convention authority reported visitor volume of 79,000 in Mesquite in June and 483,000 for the first half of the year. It has no comparative figures for 2021, but was down 28.7 percent from June 2019 and off 88.5 percent from the first six months of 2019.

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