{"id":28024,"date":"2020-09-23T09:35:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T17:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=28024"},"modified":"2020-09-27T15:33:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T23:33:42","slug":"has-las-vegas-jumped-the-shark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/has-las-vegas-jumped-the-shark\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Las Vegas jumped the shark?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Global Gaming Business<\/em>, hardly a canary in a coalmine, must think the Covid-19<\/strong> pandemic is pretty horrendous for it to blast a special report today that Las Vegas Strip<\/strong> casinos are “barely surviving” at the moment. No conventions, scant air traffic, no shows = trouble. Or, as the headline puts it, the Strip is “battening down the hatches.” Global Market Advisor<\/strong>s economist Steve Gallaway<\/strong> minces no words: “until airborne tourism and the convention trade return to something like pre-pandemic levels, the market will remain a shadow of what it was.” Pre-pandemic levels? That could be quite a wait. It took over a decade to regain what was lost in the Great Recession of 2008. Currently, tourism is 40% of what it was before we heard the word ‘Coronavirus.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visitor volume did ramp up significantly from June to July (August numbers are not available yet) and gaming win is at 52% of pre-virus levels. \u201cThe people we\u2019re seeing come to Vegas are your core gamers,” says Gallaway. \u201cCounts are down, but they\u2019re getting good revenue out of those gamers. It shows that operators are working their databases and it shows that gamblers want to gamble.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Then comes the big ‘but’ … as in, that revenue model works on regional basis, not in Las Vegas<\/strong>, which has diversified away from gambling (which is why we think Atlantic City<\/strong> will come back sooner). Even if that weren’t the case, casino win in Sin City is flat. One of the new profit centers, hotel rooms, is running at far less than last year’s 92% occupancy and $180\/night rates. With almost surgical precision, Covid-19 restrictions have fiendishly targeted the areas of the resort industry<\/a> with the biggest profit margins. \u201cThe tourism industry is going to come back in full force,” Gallaway predicts. \u201cOnce people can travel and have fun, they\u2019re going to do it.\u201d When? \u201cUntil there\u2019s a vaccine.\u201d We think it will take a little\u2014maybe a lot\u2014more than that, including a drastic reduction in Coronavirus cases (presently 770 deaths a day), a disease that is damnably persistent. \u201cWe aren\u2019t going to restore our economy until every state has this virus under control,\u201d says Johns Hopkins University<\/strong> public health researcher Jennifer Nuzzo<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and lower jobless rates (especially high in minority and tribal communities, which have also borne the brunt of the pandemic). People without jobs can’t very well splurge on Ka<\/em>, no matter how good it is. And, as we come up on the first virtual Global Gaming Expo<\/strong>, we’ll start to learn how much standard meeting-and-expo model is going to be changed by its new, online mode. Even Gallaway has doubts the conventioneers will ever be back in their former strength, asking, \u201cThe whole group industry, nationwide, worldwide, is going to decline. Businesses have learned that they can do a lot remotely and save a lot of money. So, the question is, how does that recover?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Let’s fast-forward past the recovery and look at how the industry will be different. Tribal-gaming expert Kevin Huddleston<\/strong> has a number of observations<\/a>, which he boils down to three key points. One is that cashless gaming is coming, another that the old restaurant and (assuming it returns) buffet models will have to change with an increased emphasis on safety. (This presumes that a post-Covid world doesn’t complacent and revert to its old ways … until the next pandemic.) Finally, hotels and spas, very hands-on businesses, will find new ways of doing business. It’s doubtful that many Strip operators would give him an argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While on the topic of jobs, the Silver State added 6,500 jobs last month but remains 9.5% behind where it was in August 2019. The vast bulk of the new jobs were in the Vegas metro area but it’s reeling anyway, down 12% (bad news for locals casinos) and with the hospitality sector awash in unemployment, -25%. Reno<\/strong> got off comparatively lightly, minus 5.5% jobs overall, and 14% in the hospitality and entertainment sector. The only silver lining to be found was an uptick in the mining sector, causing obscure Eureka County<\/strong> to lead the state in highest rate of employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S.<\/strong> passed a shameful milestone this week, that of 200,000 Covid-19 deaths, the most of any country in the world<\/a>. Only Brazil<\/strong> comes close. As the Boston Globe<\/em> reported, “The number of dead in the U.S. is equivalent to a 9\/11<\/strong> attack every day for 67 days.” Let that sink in a minute. The pandemic will be a dark and disgraceful chapter in our history. Had the federal government and some states displayed a scintilla of the initiative that the casino industry (and the private sector in general) did, the death toll would have been immeasurably less. Or, as a responsible party said, Covid-19 “affects virtually nobody<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global Gaming Business, hardly a canary in a coalmine, must think the Covid-19 pandemic is pretty horrendous for it to blast a special report today that Las Vegas Strip casinos are “barely surviving” at the moment. No conventions, scant air … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,274,18,14,4,104,283,140,79,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28028,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28024\/revisions\/28028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}