5 Saturdays Boost July Visitation 4.7 Percent

Don't get your hopes up too high, folks, but there's actually some seriously good news today on the economic front.

The LVCVA put out the monthly data for July, and the headline is that visitation and room-nights occupied were both up 4.7 percent and that room rates rose 4.8 percent over July 2009. Also, July 2010 saw a record drive-in traffic from California. At the same time, though, gaming revenue dropped 5 percent from last July, reflecting more frugal tourists.

The big caveat here is that there were five Saturdays in July, but guess what? That also happened in 2006, one of our peak years. I looked at the numbers from back then, and they tell the story even better:

* Visitation in July 2006 was only 1.1 percent higher than in July 2010
* There were 15,000 fewer rooms then
* The average daily room rate was $104.19, down $13.81 or 13.2 percent
* Gaming revenue for Clark County was $850,255,000, off more than $156 million or 18.4 percent.

So, the visitation gains are real. It's just that the rest of the enterprise remains a wreck. Downtown Las Vegas in particular is a disaster, down 19.3 percent in gaming revenue in July 2010 versus July 2009 but down 35 percent fr0m July 2006. Sweet lord.

Also sad: That extra Saturday didn't even help Laughlin and Mesquite, both of which still lost visitors in July 2010 versus July 2009. Laughlin room rates were down 12 percent, to $40.14 a night, although the Laughlin airport saw a 28.2 percent jump in passengers deplaning. Did a new carrier come to that market?

Bottom line: Las Vegas is still extremely popular. The notion that the city is dead, that it can never recover, is a lie. People still love coming here and they'll be back whenever they can afford it. That's the silver lining, even if it is way, way, way off in the horizon.

GOOD Economic News? Whaaa?

In economics, what goes down must go up sooner or later, right? According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's monthly data dump:

* Total rooms occupied in March is up 0.8% and year-to-date 1.4%
* Room rates even inched up 0.8% to an average of $93.23
* Auto traffic at the NV-CA border was up 6.2%
* Gaming revenues for the Strip were in 2.4% in March and -- get this -- 9.8% year to date.
* Visitation overall increased 0.7% in March, the seventh consecutive month of positive change.
* Convention attendance in March was up 5.2%, although it's still down 8.3% year to date. Evidently, though, a big tradeshow normally in April was in March this year, so it may mean nothing.

What it means: More people -- a modest amount, but Vegas must take what it can get -- are coming, they're even paying and playing a bit more, but they're driving. (Air traffic was down 4% in March.) Also, despite MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren's loftiest pre-opening predictions that CityCenter would be responsible for a large surge in visitation this year, there's no evidence of any impact whatsoever, large or small, as yet.

What it means to you: The end of the absurd bargain fire sale that has been Vegas for the past two years is within view. The rest of this year maybe the last time you ever can get Vegas this cheap again. It certainly won't be getting less expensive from here on out, except maybe in the downtown area where gaming revenues fell 10.6% in March.

On one last side note, the math continues to be spectacularly disastrous for Mesquite. Even with 9.6% fewer rooms available because of resort and tower closures, the charming Nevada-Utah border town's occupancy fell 6.5% and total room nights plummeted 15.7%.

The Happy Side of Crap

Month after month, the gaming and hotel stats have been crappy. Which is why, of course, I prefer to look for that one itsy bitsy piece of happiness every month to make it all OK.

This month's best stat? Hotel occupancy in Mesquite, Nev., for 2009 so far is UP 3.8 percent! Woo hoo! Celebrati... oh, wait. They closed a hotel in Mesquite because of the downturn, didn't they? The number of hotel rooms is DOWN 27.4 percent. So they lost a quarter of their rooms but they only increased their occupancy rate by that? Oops. I'm a hopemonger. Sorry.

I guess we'll have to be contented with this stat: The number of people who boarded and deplaned at the airport in Laughlin-Bullhead City is up 0.3 percent. Uh, yay.

Hey. Take the ray of sunshine where you can get it. And here's one for consumers: The average room rate is now $92.46 so far in 2009. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Trying REALLY HARD To Look On The Bright Side

Economic news is so frigging depressing these days. People ask Miles and me what happened to our plans to adopt a child and all we can say is that adoption is expensive and we used to have a whole bunch of equity in our house that's now gone. Poof! Disappeared! So we'll wait. Every day the newspapers overflow with unhappy statistics, job losses and stock collapses. It's gotten so bad that newly minted pauper Sheldon Adelson is offering $119-a-night rooms.

So this morning, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority emailed out its monthly summary for Clark County of hotel occupancy, convention attendance, visitor volume, the works. And, true to form, it should have come with a loaded pistol for any gaming stockholder wanting to blow their brains out. It's just a bloodbath of negative percentages versus August 2007, with the most stunning drop to me being that the economic impact of conventions fell from $1 billion to $777 million, a 23.6 percent decline. Sad times and, if you want a reason to weep, you can look at all the figures here.

But I'm an optimist! I scoured the information for something -- anything! -- that was going well to cheer y'all up! And lo and behold, there was one itty-bitty happy note in... Laughlin!

Yep, Laughlin. Hotel occupancy was up 2.8 percent in August! What's more, they're getting 14.9 percent more per room -- the average room there is now $47.21 versus $41.10 in August 2007. And 19.6 percent more people were flying into the Laughlin-Bullhead "International" Airport, too. Why Laughlin? Beats the hell outta me. But there you have it.

Oh! There is one other upside, at least for consumers. Room rates in Mesquite plummetted 41.2 percent from an average of $78.42 in August 2007 to $46.11 for August 2008. Mesquite is a sensational place. If you've never been, it's so pretty up there with the mountains and the river.

And that, folks, is it. Almost every other indicator was negative except one that I don't think is actually a good thing -- there are now 3.3 percent more rooms in the Las Vegas area. We're now at 137,690, up from 133,328 last year at this time. Most of that is the Palazzo, but about 300 come from the Eastside Cannery. That's sad because the part of Vegas that took the biggest gaming-revenue drop? That would be the Boulder Strip, off 22.4 percent in August year-over-year. And just think, this time next year we'll have Encore (+2,000 rooms), Aliante Station (+200 rooms), M Resort (+390 rooms) and Caesars' Octavius Tower (+650 rooms). And that's before Aria (+4,000 rooms) and the rest of the CityCenter crowd opens.

But, you know, anyone who suggests Vegas is even temporarily overbuilt is a pooh-poohing naysayer who doesn't know his history and hasn't seen a 1955 cover of Life Magazine. Or something like that.