It has been written about time and time again: The drop in the global economy has affected just about every industry.  Not just the big banks or the housing market or the automotive industry.  Everything.  With the economic slowdown, people and families have been reluctant to travel too far from their home or travel at all.  The tourism and hospitality industries are really feeling the pinch from this trend.  The casinos and casino resorts of Las Vegas, Nevada are also noticing a decline in tourists visiting their city.  Reports are in that Las Vegas suffered close to a 3.7 percent drop in visitor volume in August.  This is the fifteenth straight month of decline.

Visitor numbers for the casino haven for January through August of 2009 were about 24.4 million.  Not a bad number until you consider that there were 25.9 million visitors for the same time period the year before.  That is a drop of 5.8 percent.  In August alone, numbers fell from 3.1 million visitors to from 3.2 in 2008.

Room occupancy is seeing an even bigger hit.  August numbers showed that 81.4 percent of rooms in the casino resorts were filled.  Not bad until you consider that it is a decrease of 6.9 percent from the previous year.  There are some analysts who feel the downturn isn’t so bad.  Robert LaFleur said, “Occupancy levels are pretty much back to where they were. They’ve stimulated a lot of people to come to market with very aggressive pricing discounts.”  The good news, he continued, is, “People showed up and didn’t spend anything much on the rooms so they’re spending more on gaming.”  However most experts agree that the money was lost when the daily room rate dropped on average 21.5 percent.

Las Vegas, is also feeling the slide with a decline in the convention business.  With sin city being such a top name (and dollar) location, business are holding their conventions in smaller market areas.  They may not have the casinos but the rates seem more feasible in this time.

Tags: casino, gambling, online