Las Vegas hotels hire hundreds when tourists return
As more people are vaccinated against COVID-19, many feel safe enough to travel again. The Las Vegas Strip is already seeing demand and hotels need to hire more staff, and quickly.
This time last year all hotels had to close, turning the “city that never sleeps” into a sleepy ghost town.
“Everything you see right now was completely blank,” said Randy Goldberg, vice president of talent acquisition strategy at MGM Resorts International. “When the pandemic started the properties were closed for over three months so it was a good time before we closed completely, many government restrictions on what our occupancy could be, how many people could be in our casinos.”
Las Vegas is heavily dependent on tourism. Travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders resulted in hundreds of workers being laid off across the city, hurting the local economy.
“Well, in February last year (2020) we hit a high and fell off a cliff and in April (2020) we had just lost tons of jobs and the attendance was falling, we had no more conventions in the city, it was a disaster, “said Stephen Miller, director at the Las Vegas Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada.
Visitor numbers in February of around 1.54 million visitors recorded an increase of 18.9% compared to January 2021. (FOX Business)
Now that the vaccine is available, cases are falling and restrictions are being lifted, and the longing to travel is greater than ever. Already this month, from April 1st to April 14th, nearly 20 million people across the country passed TSA checkpoints. At the same time last year, only 1.4 million travelers came.
“What we are experiencing today is obviously a big comeback, this backlog. You can see that individual travelers want to be here in Las Vegas,” said Goldberg.
As more people are vaccinated against COVID-19, many feel safe enough to travel again. The Las Vegas Strip is already seeing demand and hotels need to hire more staff, and quickly. (FOX business)
Economists say the city still has a long way to go. The total number of visits to Las Vegas in February was still down 53%, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Although less than half of the previous year’s figure, the number of visitors in February showed around 1.54 million visitors, an increase of 18.9% compared to January 2021. The March statistics have not yet been published.
“If you look at the occupancy rate, it’s very high on the weekends, very low on weekdays, and mediocre on average, so we still have a long way to go to get back,” said Miller. “If the optimists are right, I think we’ll be back to normal sometime in 2022. I suspect it will probably be 2023, early 2023.”
MGM Resorts International is one of the city’s largest employers and operates 12 iconic hotels. As of December 31, 2020, they employed about 60% of their normal workforce, that’s about 42,000 people in their U.S. operations. Before the pandemic, it was around 70,000.
Economists say we still have a long way to go. The total number of visits to Las Vegas in February was still down 53%, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. (FOX business)
Now they’re looking to fill hundreds of these positions, from receptionists and cleaners to food servers and security guards.
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“We have job fairs every week. The great thing about these job fairs is that you can come by, meet our HR managers and we will offer you the job at the job fair, ”said Goldberg. “MGM offers a College Opportunities program, we are very proud of it, so that each employee can choose to go back to school, get their associate, bachelor, or master degree and do so online at of Nevada Education Institutions and we do it for free. So a very important part of our philosophy at MGM is to keep growing and developing you. “
Not only is it MGM, but almost all hotels hire dozens of positions. A quick search brings up a list of in-person, virtual, and drive-through job fairs. All interested parties can find out more about the possibilities of MGM here.
