Tourist group expects 41.6 million Vegas visitors this year

At Tuesday’s authority board meeting, Kevin Bagger, senior director of strategic research and analysis for the organization that markets the city to the world, reported preliminary visitation statistics for last year.

The agency started 2014 by projecting 40 million visitors for the year, but Bagger said his staff now expect the final count to be a record 41.1 million.

Agency officials are confident visitation will grow in 2015, based on a healthier economy nationwide and anticipated increases in airport capacity in the months ahead.

Officials are projecting growth in domestic air capacity of 3 percent in 2015.

Service announcements already have been announced by Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue, Spirit Airlines, Virgin America and Southwest Airlines.

Bagger also said he’s projecting the city’s occupancy rate for the year to be 86.8 percent. That compares with a rate of 64.1 percent nationwide.

The early statistical look says visitation was up 3.5 percent over 2013, convention attendance was up 1.2 percent, to 5.2 million, occupancy was 2.5 percentage points ahead of last year and the average daily room rate climbed 5.4 percent, with revenue per available room up 8.4 percent.

Bagger said the comparison of the Las Vegas and national occupancy rates is always an eye-opener.

“We always try to maintain a 20- to 25-point level over the national average,” Bagger said.

Las Vegas routinely has occupancy rates of between 80 percent and 90 percent.

He said there are few new hotel rooms in the pipeline for 2015 and 2016, but the city’s next megaresort is on tap for a 2017 opening. The planned Genting Group resort on the Strip, Resorts World Las Vegas, on the site of the old Stardust and the former Echelon construction site, is expected to add 3,000 new rooms to the city’s inventory. The current room count is 150,544 after the additions of the SLS and Cromwell properties in 2014.

Getting people to Las Vegas was also under discussion Tuesday.

Damon Hylton, an aviation consultant with Seabury Aviation Planning Group, said that while passenger volume at McCarran International Airport was up 2.5 percent, capacity was up only 1 percent — an indication that airlines are filling up planes more often than in the past.

While domestic capacity growth was flat, international capacity rose 13.1 percent, making Las Vegas the fastest-growing international market for the second straight year.

International growth was paced by Canadian air carriers — a 23 percent increase in capacity and an 87 percent load factor resulting in 71,000 additional arrivals in 2014 over the prior year. From Mexico, capacity grew 22 percent with 82 percent loads, resulting in 34,000 additional tourists.

Hylton said two of the biggest surprises in his analysis of international arrivals was the success of Volaris’ Cancun route from Las Vegas and Edelweiss’ route from Zurich to Las Vegas.

Hylton said other countries have discovered the Volaris Cancun route and have taken advantage of connecting flights.

“It turns out Cancun is a popular honeymoon destination for South Koreans, so we’re seeing a good number of South Korean residents flying here and then connecting to Cancun,” he said.

The Edelweiss route will expand from two to three flights a week later this year. The reason: Edelweiss is an affiliate carrier of the Lufthansa group and a number of Lufthansa customers from South Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent connect on Edelweiss to Las Vegas.

In other business in Tuesday’s meeting, the board approved spending $399,500 to sponsor the 20th annual Boyd International Aviation Forecast Summit in August and $225,000 to participate in IMEX Frankfurt, a major international tourism exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, in May.

The board also elected officers to two-year terms. The board’s new chairman is Clark County Commissioner Lawrence Weekly, who has become the first African-American to chair the LVCVA board. He succeeds County Commissioner Tom Collins.

Taking over as vice chairman is Charles Bowling, president and chief operating officer of Mandalay Bay; Tom Jenkin, president of operations for Caesars Entertainment, is the new secretary; and treasurer is Bill Noonan, senior vice president of administration for Boyd Gaming.

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