Smiling again: After lull, Vegas tourism indicators back to growth in May

After a month of somewhat lackluster visitation trends in April, May results got tourism experts smiling again, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said Wednesday.

Visitor volume hit 3.5 million in May, the second-best total month of the year to date, and all but one visitation indicator was in positive ground compared with one year ago.

Convention attendance got back to a double-digit percentage increase (up 16.1 percent to 453,900 attendees) and the passenger counts at Harry Reid International Airport were the highest of the year, just missing the 5 million mark.

Gaming analyst John DeCree of Las Vegas-based CBRE Equity Research said in a Wednesday report to investors that convention attendance still has room to grow from the pandemic years considering May 2019 numbers.

“Visitation was 5.2 percent below May 2019, however, convention attendance was still 12.8 percent below May 2019, leaving plenty of more room to recover,” DeCree said. “Occupancy on the Strip rose 150 basis points year over year to 87 percent but is still 520 basis points below the same month in 2019, likely due to the gap in convention attendance.”

At Harry Reid International Airport, passenger counts hit 4.953 million in May, boosting the 2023 total to 23.3 million for the first five months of the year, an 18.7 percent increase from last year.

International arrivals soared by 20.1 percent to 282,373 for the month, while domestic counts were up 8.1 percent to 4.6 million passengers.

Among domestic commercial air carriers, three of the top five airlines showed double-digit percentage increases among inbound and outbound travel.

No. 2 carrier Spirit Airlines was up 26.1 percent to 755,397, No. 5 United Airlines jumped 14.7 percent to 366,676, and top dog Southwest Airlines increased 10.1 percent to 1.8 million passengers.

For the first five months, all five of the top domestic carriers have had increases with Southwest up 17.5 percent to 8 million; Spirit soaring 47 percent to 3.6 million; No. 3 Frontier Airlines up 15.3 percent to 2 million; No. 4 Delta Air Lines up 4.2 percent to 2 million; and United up 22.7 percent to 1.7 million.

“Supported by strong demand along with multiple weekend music festivals including the Lovers &Friends festival, Sick New World festival and the recurring Electric Daisy Carnival event, Las Vegas hosted approximately 3.5 million visitors, 1.5 percent ahead of last May,” said Kevin Bagger, vice president of the LVCVA Research Center.

Visitation to Southern Nevada cooled in April, with visitor volume and average daily room rates down from a year ago and occupancy rates flat. But in May, room rates climbed 4.3 percent to $183.40 a night.

“Overall hotel occupancy reached 84.4 percent for the month (up 1.8 percentage points year over year),” Bagger said. “Weekend occupancy was healthy at 93.2 percent, up 1.3 points year over year, and midweek occupancy approached 81 percent, surpassing last May by 2 points.”

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