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Las Vegas Casinos Start Coming Back To Life24 September 2001LAS VEGAS, Nevada – September 24, 2001 – As reported by the Associated Press: ``They're back. Not all of them, but tourists are once again stuffing quarters into slot machines and checking into Las Vegas hotels. The weekend after missing visitors made the Las Vegas Strip look like a ghost town, casinos were slowly getting their business back. ```We're going to stay and have a good time,' Sherry Diedrich of Sheboygan County, Wis., said Saturday as she played a quarter slot machine at Caesars Palace.` I wasn't going to live my life scared.' ``That's the attitude the city's casinos are counting on to help them rebound from the poor visitor volume since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast. ``Tourists were expected to fill 73 percent of the city's hotel rooms this weekend, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority predicted Friday. On a normal weekend, visitors fill about 94 percent of the city's 126,083 hotel rooms. ``…Slot machines were eerily silent last weekend and many card dealers didn't have much to do besides wait for gamblers. Conventions were canceled, and hotel vacancies translated into hundreds of layoffs. ``But this is a city where luck changes every minute. On Saturday, gamblers were returning and casinos welcomed them with slashed room rates. Weekend rooms that usually go for $189 at the Paris hotel-casino were a bargain for $100. ``Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman encouraged residents to go the casinos to support the city's lifeblood economic industry…” |