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Las Vegas Tourism Down

Pressures caused by the war in Iraq and a depressed U.S. travel industry continued to plague Las Vegas tourism in April, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said Tuesday.

The city hosted more than 2.93 million visitors during the month, a 1.5 percent decline from April 2002's total of about 2.98 million visitors. Compared with April 2001, the monthly total fell by about 4.7 percent.

"There was no question that there was some impact from the war and the conservative travel market that was in existence throughout the country," said Terry Jicinsky, the authority's senior vice president of marketing.

Reduced convention attendance also played a key part in the downturn, said Kevin Bagger, convention authority research director. In April, the loss of the Classic & Collector Auto Show as well as events hosted by the National Council of Teachers, International Wireless Communications Expo and McDonald's combined to lower convention attendance by about 64,000. In addition, this year's National Association of Broadcasters event attracted about 6,000 fewer attendees than a year ago, Bagger added.

Overall, April convention attendance was 367,429, a 22.5 percent fall from the same month a year ago. Conventioneers' economic impact also fell to $427 million, a 23.1 percent dip compared with April 2002.

Las Vegas' average daily room rate for April was $83.42, down 0.7 percent from a year ago. Citywide occupancy rates were 86 percent, down 1.5 percent.

Year-to-date, Las Vegas' 11.63 million visitor total was off only 0.3 percent from the first four months of last year. Compared with the same period in 2001, visitor volume was off 2.6 percent, Bagger said.

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