Visitor volume showed a moderate increase in June over last year, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported Thursday, and for the first half of 2012, visitation is on pace to fall just short of an unprecedented 40 million tourists.
The authority said 3.4 million people visited Las Vegas in June, 2.1 percent more than in June a year ago. For the first half of 2012, 19.9 million visitors arrived in the city, 2.4 percent more than in the first six months of 2011.
It was the second straight month of percentage increases in visitors after a 0.9 percent dip in April.
Las Vegas saw a slight decline in the occupancy rate in June, but the average daily room rate climbed 8.5 percent to $109.75 for the month, the third straight month of increases.
Citywide occupancy was off 0.5 percentage points to 88 percent for the month. While hotel occupancy was up by 0.1 percentage points to 91.4 percent, motel occupancy was down 6.3 points to 57.8 percent. For the first six months, citywide occupancy is flat at 84.9 percent.
For the first half of 2012, the average daily room rate was at $110.04, 4.3 percent above the 2011 level for the same time frame.
Convention attendance had little impact on visitor volume with the number of attendees up 0.7 percent to 370,332 for the month despite there being 15.8 percent more conventions and meetings in town.
The LVCVA said the slight increase in convention attendance was due in part to a positive show rotation with the International Communications Industries Association bringing 34,000 people to the city this year. The show wasn’t in Las Vegas in 2011.
While the state Gaming Control Board reported declines in gaming revenue for the month, the LVCVA noted that for the first six months of the year, revenue is up 3.6 percent to $263.1 million in downtown Las Vegas, 2.6 percent to $415.5 million on the Boulder Strip, but off 0.6 percent to $3 billion on the Las Vegas Strip.
The LVCVA, which also tracks visitor volume in Laughlin and Mesquite, said both cities are continuing existing trends with visitation up in Mesquite but down in Laughlin.
In June, volume was up 6.9 percent to 90,430 visitors in Mesquite, while it was down 5.7 percent to 179,955 people in Laughlin.
Occupancy rates continued downward trends in Laughlin, while the average daily room rate continued to climb. Occupancy was down 2.1 percentage points to 63.1 percent in the Colorado River town in June, while the average daily room rate was up 10.4 percent to $41.59.
In Mesquite, located on the Arizona border northeast of Las Vegas on Interstate 15, occupancy was down 1.4 points to 80.7 percent, but the average daily room rate was up 2.2 percent to $49.44 for the month.