Las Vegas tourism numbers edge up in March

Las Vegas tourism numbers rose a tiny 0.1 percent in March, marking the first month of 2013 that didn’t see a decrease.

March visitation inched up to 3.54 million visitors this year from March 2012’s 3.53 million, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported Friday.

Year-to-date, Las Vegas visitation is still down 0.6 percent, to 9.7 million visitors from last year’s 9.8 million.

Scott Russell, the authority’s senior manager of research, said the reason that 2013 looks slow in visitation is that the comparisons are becoming tougher.

“Now that we’ve had 30 odd months of increases, the increases are more incremental,” Russell said.

Citywide occupancy year-over-year ticked up 0.6 points to 83.3 percent over 2012’s 82.8 percent at this time. Month-over-month, there’s only a slight uptick this year, with 88.4 percent occupancy compared with 88.3 percent last year.

Hotel occupancy in March was 90.8 percent, slightly more than March 2012’s total of 90.5 percent. March’s motel occupancy was down to 67.1 percent this year, compared with last year’s 69.2 percent.

Although weekend occupancy was down to 93.5 percent this March compared with March 2012’s 94.4 percent, weekday stays were up month-over-month to 86 percent from last year’s 85.4 percent.

The average daily room rate in March was $110.96, up from March 2012’s $107.21. Year-to-date, the average daily room rate is up to $111.52 from last year’s $109.84.

Overall convention attendance so far this year is not good.

March’s convention attendance fell 17.9 percent to 421,231 people compared with March 2012’s attendance of 513,010. Year-over-year, convention attendance is down 10.7 percent to 1.45 million people from 2012’s total of 1.63 million people.

The convention authority is again citing conventions rotating out of and leaving Las Vegas as the reason for the drop. They include the International Security Conference, Globalshop and Golf Course Superintendents Association.

Predictably, the number of conventions held in March decreased 28 percent to 1,658 shows from March 2012’s 2,302 shows.

Year-to-date, the number of shows is down 17 percent, to 4,793 from 5,778 last year.

“A couple of months doesn’t necessarily make the whole year,” Russell said.

The average daily number of vehicles coming into Las Vegas rose 5.9 percent in March, from an estimate of 101,223 a year ago to 107,216 in 2013. The number coming from Southern California on Interstate 15 was up 6.3 percent to 42,847 vehicles from 40,304. Vehicle counts include visitor, resident and commercial traffic.

Elsewhere in Clark County, the number of Laughlin visitors was down 0.4 percent, while Mesquite visitation was up 3.7 percent in the month-over-month comparisons. Year-to-date, Laughlin’s visitor count was down 4.6 percent and Mesquite’s was down 2.1 percent.

Contact reporter Laura Carroll at lcarroll@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4588. Follow @lscvegas on Twitter.