Las Vegas Gambling Revenue, Hotel Occupancy Plummet in July

The latest report by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reveals the number of visitors and gambling revenue for July in Las Vegas. Despite that results have improved from June, overall a decrease is observed.

Zero Conventions for Four Months in Las Vegas

Earlier this week, the latest report by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) revealed an increase in the number of visitors for July. Although numbers for June marked a significant decline in visitations, July numbers have slightly improved. Some 1,065,100 people visited the gambling capital of the world back in June. But in July, this number increased to 1,438,000.

The convention segment continued to register no measurable volume with continued mandated restrictions on group sizes,”

reads the report by LVCVA.

However, once we compare this number to July last year when 3,685,900 people visited Las Vegas, we observe a decrease of some 61%. Conventions have not returned and this makes July the 4th month in a row with 0 conventions taking place in Las Vegas. Looking at results from July last year, we see that in July alone conventions attracted 498,800 visitors.

A Decrease in Gambling Revenue

Looking at the report by LVCVA, we observe a decrease of the gambling revenue for Clark County in July this year. Last year in July, Clark County raised some $861 million in revenue. This year, the county reached $612 million. This marked a 28.9% decrease in gambling revenue.

Year-to-date (YTD) results mark even more significant decrease in gambling revenue. Here are the YTD results for Clark County:

• July 2019 YTD gambling revenue: $6,049,049,000
• July 2020 YTD gambling revenue: $3,412,065,000

This shows a staggering 43.6% drop in YTD revenue for Clark County alone. The LVCVA report outlined a further breakdown of the gambling revenue. In July 2019, gambling revenue for Las Vegas Strip hit $542 million. This year, it reached $330 million, which marks a 39.2% decrease.

Las Vegas Hotel Occupancy in July Only 42.5%

Back in mid-March, casinos and hotels in Nevada were ordered to shutdown. This was an effort by state officials to reduce the spread of COVID-19. After 78 days of closed doors, operators were allowed to reopen on June 4. But to operate safely, the venues had to introduce capacity limits as well as implement health and safety protocols.

This inevitably impacted the hotel occupancy. The LVCVA paper shows that in July last year, there were 148,789 available hotel rooms, which were occupied at 91.1%. In contrast, this year the number of available rooms shrank to 123,684. And occupancy plummeted to 42.5% in July this year.

The paper also outlined that in July this year, weekend occupancy reached 54.4%, down from 97.2% last year. Midweek occupancy hit 36.9%, down from 88.7% in July last year. Further breakdown of the hotel occupancy shows that Strip hotels were occupied 93.4% in July last year. Here, another decrease is observed as this July Strip hotels occupancy reached only 41.9%. The occupancy of downtown hotels showed similar results. Las Vegas downtown hotels were occupied at 85.1% in July last year. In contrast, the occupancy in July this year reached 41.8%.