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Hotels Say No Early Fallout from Anthrax Scare

LAS VEGAS, Nevada –- Tourists continued to stay at Reno and Las Vegas hotels Saturday despite the news that a letter sent to a Microsoft office in Reno tested positive for anthrax.

The 2,000-room Reno Hilton and 1,070-room Peppermill Reno reported no Saturday room cancellations as a result of the discovery.

"All I know is we're sold out this weekend and have no cancellations whatsoever," said Peppermill spokesman Miles Ottenheimer.

Reservation clerks at the Reno Hilton knew of just two Friday cancellations because of the health threat, which was revealed earlier that day by Gov. Kenny Guinn.

Las Vegas casino giants Park Place Entertainment and MGM Mirage said they experienced no change in guest plans as word spread of the anthrax scare via national TV news reports.

Similarly, representatives of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport and McCarran International Airport said they heard no talk of passenger cancellations.

But Reno-Tahoe airport spokesman Adam Mayberry was somewhat cautious in his near-term assessment of the impact of the news on his region's travel market.

"Part of me is hesitant to respond to that," Mayberry said. "My gut (response is) I ... don't think it's going to have a very significant impact if any."

Weekend travel numbers to Nevada's two largest casino towns have recovered in recent weeks from their post-Sept. 11 lows.

Reno, with its dependence on drive-in tourists from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest, appears to have been hurt less than Las Vegas by the travel fallout from the attacks.

One third of the Reno-Tahoe area's tourists arrive through the region's airport, while nearly half of Las Vegas' visitors pass through McCarran. The significance of those figures are punctuated by the fact that millions of potential domestic and international travelers have stayed off airplanes after the jetliner attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Meantime, word of the anthrax discovery at the Reno Microsoft office prompted one casino industry observer to question its impact on the Nevada tourism market.

"The thing that's bad is it's a gambling name. Just the word 'Reno' associates everything with gambling, Nevada and Las Vegas," said Bill Thompson, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor who studies the casino industry. "So when people say (Reno and anthrax) they might think Las Vegas-Reno are close to one another."

And that, Thompson said, could at least temporarily reduce travel to both cities.

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