Businesses given early access to “Book” tickets

Hey businesses, this is your chance.

From now until Nov. 1, groups of 200 or more can purchase tickets to “The Book of Mormon” before they go on sale in December. Cost is $250 per person and includes premium seating, VIP beverage service and a pre-show reception.

Contact The Smith Center for more information.

Travel to the U.S. is on the rise, according to the most recent count available.

Year-to-date through March, international travel to the U.S. is up 6 percent. For the first three months of 2013, 15 million international visitors came to America.

A total of 5.8 million international visitors traveled to the United States in March 2013, up 10 percent from March 2012 according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The top inbound markets continued to be Canada and Mexico. Non-resident visits from Canada increased 11 percent while visits from Mexico grew 5 percent.

Visitation from Japan increased 7 percent, while United Kingdom visitation increased 2 percent and German visitation was up 4 percent.

Two Henderson hotels are looking a little shinier these days.

First, the Courtyard Las Vegas Henderson/Green Valley’s 816-square-foot Meeting Room A was recently renovated. Second, the Residence Inn Las Vegas Henderson/Green Valley recently received renovations in its lobby and gatehouse, including a new front desk, flooring and cabinetry as well as a redesigned breakfast area.

Expect holiday shopping to get crazy this year, at least on the retailers’ end.

First off, many retail analysts are saying that stores will probably put out their Christmas and Hanukkah goods before Halloween, a trend that’s been continuing for at least a few years.

ShopperTrak is citing the calendar as the reason this time: Retailers have a reduced timeframe to capture peak holiday spending as only 25 days lie between Black Friday and Christmas this year, compared with 31 days in 2012. Typically, weekends are busy times for customers to visit stores and, unlike last year, consumers have only four full weekends to shop instead of five.

In addition, Hanukkah begins the day before Thanksgiving, 11 days earlier than in 2012. While an early Hanukkah will not affect overall holiday sales, it will shift the time some retailers anticipate traffic increases. As a result, ShopperTrak expects promotions will begin as early as the day after Halloween — the very start of the holiday season.

As such, hiring announcements began in mid-September. Kohl’s, for instance, is hiring more than 50,000 associates for the holidays, which includes an average of 40 associates per store at the eight Kohl’s locations in the Las Vegas area.

When compared with the same period last year, retail sales are expected to rise 2.4 percent during the holiday season of November and December, according to ShopperTrak. However, shoppers are expected to visit fewer stores.

“Although the economy continues to recover slowly, consumers remain cautious about spending and are not ready to splurge,” said ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin.

And if that’s enough, no longer is Black Friday the biggest deal day of the year. Because of increased competition from online, retailers are putting out their best deals before Turkey Day, at least that’s what Dealnews is reporting.

“While we all clamor over the lure of both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it appears that the days preceding both are actually better in terms of sheer volume of top-shelf deals. There are potentially many reasons for this, but a likely explanation is that retailers are releasing Black Friday deals early in an attempt to trump the competition,” according to Dealnews.

Contact reporter Laura Carroll at 702-380-4588 or lcarroll@reviewjournal.com. Follow @lscvegas on Twitter.