Las Vegas Monorail rides will be included for ConExpo/Agg attendees

When 130,000 people arrive for the giant ConExpo-Con/Agg construction equipment trade show in March, they’ll be able to scan their convention registration badges and ride the Las Vegas Monorail.

Attendees may ride free for three days, exhibitors for seven days.

The Las Vegas Monorail Co. earlier this week announced an agreement with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers to include monorail transportation as part of its registration packet for the show, which runs March 7-11 and fills the entire Las Vegas Convention Center campus when it arrives in the city every three years.

It’s the first time the monorail company has negotiated such an arrangement, which it and the association are calling a “badge-pack bundle.”

Terms of the agreement between the monorail company and the association that produces the show were not disclosed.

“One of the original concepts of our system has been integrating the monorail fare into registration and into hotels,” said Ingrid Reisman, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Las Vegas Monorail.

“It was always part of the timing to get the technical interface between their badging and our fare gate system,” she said. “We had to make our computer systems communicate with each other.”

Within the hardware that is being retrofitted into the gate system, the monorail company is developing a QR code reader, and codes will be placed on ConExpo badges.

Once the system is in place, Reisman sees an opportunity for the company to approach other show producers about establishing similar systems.

“It will make sense for some shows, but not all of them,” she said, noting that some shows have free or minimal-fee registration costs with which it may not make sense to add fees.

But the benefits can be big for some of the largest shows in which parking for attendees is an issue and the streets get more congested with buses, taxis and ride-hailing vehicles moving conventioneers to and from the venue. The monorail system has stops at the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Westgate Las Vegas and connects an estimated 26,000 hotel rooms.

The system could be even more beneficial in the future as the monorail company works toward extending the system’s route south to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center and develops a new stop near the Sands Expo and Convention Center, connecting the city’s three largest convention centers. That plan is under study by the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee.

The system will be particularly worthwhile for ConExpo-Con/Agg, which is the largest show by exhibit space to come to Las Vegas Convention Center.

In addition to filling every exhibit hall, ConExpo uses every parking lot on the convention center campus for outdoor exhibits, producing a virtual forest of construction cranes across the acreage. This year, show organizers have negotiated to use newly available space near the former site of the shuttered Riviera. Workers have begun demolishing the low-level Riviera buildings and are planning implosions of two hotel towers in June and August.

Crews are working to clear the site by the end of December and turn it over to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority in January in preparation for the outdoor exhibits planned there.

Correction: This story has been updated to describe the free Las Vegas Monorail rides with registration for the 2017 ConExpo-Con/Agg construction equipment trade show. Attendees may ride free for three days, exhibitors for seven days.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Find him on Twitter: @RickVelotta