Las Vegas sees slight, steady increase in visitors

Tourists pose in front of the iconic Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign in this file photo. Officials expect large, but not abnormal, crowds for Memorial Day weekend.

Visitor volume maintained its slow but steady pace in May, with volume increasing 2.4 percent for the month, the same level of increase for the first five months of the year, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported Thursday.

The authority reported 3.5 million people visited Las Vegas in May. That includes 367,899 people attending conventions and meetings, a 4.4 percent increase over May 2011.

May was the second busiest month for Las Vegas this year after March.

Authority officials said convention attendance was up largely because of positive calendar rotation, including the staging of Lightfair International, an architectural and commercial lighting conference that brought 22,000 people to the city.

Citywide occupancy was up 0.5 percentage points to 86.6 percent for the month and the average daily room rate was up 3.7 percent to $112.43.

It was the second straight month of room rate increases, and for 2012, the average rate is up 3.4 percent to $110.10 a night.

While most tourism indicators are showing steady increases, the amount of auto traffic on Interstate 15 at the California-Nevada border was up 13.2 percent to 43,266 vehicles a day in May and for the year, it’s up 8.4 percent to 40,551 vehicles per day.

The number of conventions and meetings conducted in the city was off 0.6 percent to 1,742, but for the year, the number of conventions and meetings is up 21.2 percent to 9,458.

May visitor volume was a positive rebound after April’s totals fell 0.9 percent from last year, the first monthly percentage decline in 26 months.

May was another off month for Laughlin, which now has had 17 straight months of percentage declines in visitor volume from the previous year. The number of visitors was down 7.9 percent from May 2011 to 175,981, as the popularity of Southern California tribal casinos continued to put a dent in the Colorado River community’s tourism.

Despite the downturn in volume, convention attendance in Laughlin was up for the third straight month and the average daily room rate was up from the year-ago level for the 16th straight month. For 2012, Laughlin’s room rates are up 3.4 percent to $42.28 a night.

Fortunes were brighter in Mesquite, where visitor volume was up for the fifth straight month. May volume was up 10.5 percent, the best percentage increase of 2012, to 94,701 people.

Mesquite’s average daily room rate reversed a two-month downward trend with May rates at $53.08 a night, 3.3 percent ahead of May 2011.

The LVCVA monitors tourism trends in Laughlin and Mesquite.

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