Thread: Las Vegas Desperate for Tourists: Offering Major Discounts and Advertising Campaign

Great article on how the casino business is doing in LV... do you think it's going to be better soon in Vegas?

With the Primm casino chain giving away free nights at its hotel to attract locals to its slots, while the Excalibur offers visitors 24-hour access to its all-you-can-eat buffet for just US$25 (RM90), it would seem that high-rollers are few and far between in down-at-heel Las Vegas. Even the "spiff" — a well-documented practice where strip clubs pay taxi drivers to steer parties of "frat" boys their way — is on the wane.

As the recession bites across middle America, the nation's gambling centre has been forced to offer attractive discounts to get gamblers in front of tables.

So the last thing it needed was for US President Barack Obama to turn against it, telling bankers earlier this month "you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas on the taxpayer's dime."

The President's comments — following news of a 1,000-man Wells Fargo junket to Vegas' luxurious Wynn resort — hit a raw nerve on The Strip.

Within days, not only had Wells Fargo cancelled its 12-night boondoggle — intended to champion and reward its top performing mortgage bankers — but Goldman Sachs and insurer State Farm pulled major conventions too.

The city's mayor, Oscar Goodman , was not too happy with the President's comments, calling them "outrageous" and initially demanding a retraction before settling for a clarification and inviting the new President to visit Vegas later in the year.

With the delights of the casinos themselves, the draw of a variety of big name shows from Cirque de Soleil and Cher, not to mention the nearby Grand Canyon, Vegas has long been a big draw for banks and other major companies looking to reward staff by all-expenses paid excursions.

Not anymore. Spurred by a new focus on cost in light of multi-billion dollar capital injections from the US Treasury and a general desire to reduce spending on extra-curricular activities, lavish Vegas conferences are no longer all the rage.

Statistics show that some 50,000 hotel room nights have been cancelled in the last six weeks alone, at an estimated cost to the city and its surrounds of approximately US$30 million.

Small change maybe for a city whose annual economic draw is in excess of US$41 billion, but testament to a growing and worrying trend, exemplified by the fact that Vegas's downtown reported an 8.1 per cent drop in revenue last year.

It's not that the city is without conventions. This weekend, Vegas will play host to 250 members from the American Dental Society of Anaesthesiology, while in the coming week 1,500 people are expected at the 2009 Creative Painting show, while some 30,000 doctors will descend on the city for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons' annual get-together. In fact, the city will still play host to in excess of 20,000 conferences, meetings or conventions this year.

But statistics show that the number of visitors coming to the city for conventions or meetings — which account for approximately one-fifth of Vegas' annual US$41 billion take — are down.

According to the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, convention attendance in 2008 fell to 5.9 million from 6.2 million in 2007, with the number of actual events down by 5.8 per cent.

"The overall economy has had an impact on business and leisure visitation," says Jeremy Handel of the LVCVA, stressing that Vegas caters to every type of business gathering, not just banking.

In order to combat some of the recent bad press the city has received, Handel reveals that the LVCVA is involved in putting together a new advertising campaign focussing on attracting the meetings industry.

"This is a US$240 billion industry nationwide, and it's an US$8.5 billion industry for us, and obviously Las Vegas wants to help maintain the health of the industry," he adds.

The adverts will begin appear in major US consumer business titles like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in the "next few weeks," with the aim of getting under the noses of those who are most likely to attend such events.

The city should also benefit in the medium-term from a fast rail link from Los Angeles, as part of the US$8 billion to be spent on high-speed rail projects under the US$787 billion fiscal stimulus Bill, reducing the need to fly to the city for Californians at least.

But one senior banking source from one of the institutions which recently cancelled events in Vegas said that part of the problem was that the city is often seen as being a little too frivolous for a serious job of work: "Yes, you can have fun in Vegas, but you can have just as much fun in Los Angeles or Miami, without the perception that all you're going to do is party."

Until recently, one respite for Vegas had been the weak dollar. But with the greenback's strengthening in the last few months, the number of overseas guests is diminishing.

Even Asian businessmen, once a mainstay of the city's hotels and casinos, are beginning to be light on the ground, with revenue from the game of baccarat — the preferred choice for the majority of those visitors from the Far East — down 49 per cent in the last three months of 2008, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Anecdotal evidence from companies operating special day-trips out of the city for Japanese and Mandarin-speakers is similar, with those spoken to saying their business has more or less halved in the last six months.

Obviously there's no reason to worry that that Vegas is on its way out — I mean just take a look at the tourists coming in. Visitor numbers will still exceed 35 million this year alone. The only thing is that the TYPES of tourists may change. Business customers may become more wary of attending Las Vegas for fear of adverse publicity.

The old marketing adage that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" may still be true — it's just how those visitors come to be there in the first place that appears to be changing.