The Las Vegas tourism industry is expected to rebound this year from its sharp dip in 2020, but the valley’s economic recovery could stall if it suffers another wave of coronavirus infections, a new one said Report.
The UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research predicts that visitor traffic in southern Nevada will increase 57 percent this year and 13.2 percent next year, after a decrease of 55.2 percent in 2020 after the Pandemic that had kept people at home and away from the crowds for fear of contagion.
The center also predicts that southern Nevada gambling revenue will grow 35.5 percent this year and 10.7 percent next year, after falling 36.8 percent in 2020, and that hotel and motel occupancy will rise 30.2 percent this year and 12.1 percent next year, after dropping 46.6 percent in 2020.
With the Las Vegas area relying so heavily on tourism to boost its economy, its prospects overall are tied to the future path of the coronavirus, the center reported.
The pandemic-triggered recession hit southern Nevada “like a sledgehammer,” although further advances in vaccinating people and the lack of a variant that can bypass these safeguards “make economic recovery much more likely,” the center reported.
But a new wave of coronavirus cases could stall that comeback, she added.
The pandemic led to massive job losses nationwide in the past year. But the aftermath was particularly dire in casino-heavy Las Vegas, threatening the very foundation of the local economy as a place people from all over the country and the world visit, often by air, to stay and eat, drink in huge hotels , playing, partying and networking, all in confined spaces with crowds of others and often indoors.
Las Vegas’s unemployment rate, which was just 3.6 percent in February 2020, rose to 33.3 percent last April after Governor Steve Sisolak ordered casinos and other businesses to shut down in Nevada to curb the spread of the virus.
Many people have since returned to work, and tourism has recently increased as vaccines are introduced and daily life returns to normal. But some resorts remain closed for more than a year after they were allowed to reopen after the state-mandated lockdown, and the normally lucrative Las Vegas convention industry is only now beginning to resurface after the pandemic left groups that used to hold face-to-face meetings online .
Las Vegas’s unemployment rate has shrunk significantly since the early chaos of the pandemic, but remains elevated at 8.9 percent through May, state officials reported.
Southern Nevada is “significantly exposed” to sectors that rely on face-to-face meetings, and as a result, “our economic recovery is really tied at the waist” to recovery from the pandemic, UNLV economics professor Stephen Miller said in a presentation Thursday.
Miller told the Review Journal that he reckons it will be a year before the convention industry returns to normal. Such gatherings usually take much longer to plan than a typical Las Vegas vacation.
All in all, the economy has not fully recovered but is moving in the right direction, he said.
Assuming southern Nevada doesn’t get another wave of infections, he added, “Things are looking pretty good.”
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.
