LAS VEGAS-The gaming take at Nevada's casinos continued its month-to-month and fiscal year decline compared with 2009 in June, declining 6.65% to $763.8 million for the month and 4.3% for the fiscal year to date, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The take slipped in all but two of the 19 submarkets tracked by the board, which reports figures on the statewide total as well as the 19 submarkets.
The only two markets that posted monthly increases were South Lake Tahoe at 13.53% and the Carson Valley area at 5.15%, but those two are also down for the fiscal year to date, 16.75% in South Lake Tahoe and 4.48% in Carson Valley. The Las Vegas Strip, the largest of the markets, dipped 7.62% for the month to $382.9 million and is down .63% for the fiscal year to date.
An analysis of the revenue figures by CB Richard Ellis gaming industry analysts Jacob Oberman and Brent Pirosch points out that luxury properties appear to be performing "somewhat better on a relative basis because they are better positioned to garner group business and their customers are less affected by rising airfares." Their report cites commentary from Strip operators that convention/group bookings are on the rise from the trough levels of 2009 and early 2010. According to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Association, convention attendance has been down year-to-date, Oberman and Pirosch note in their report. They attribute the year-to-date decline to "the extreme pull-back in group bookings in the first half of 2009," pointing out that there is a lag from the booking date to the arrival date.
The CBRE analysts also point out that, although convention attendance was down year-to-date, convention attendance in March, April and May was up single digits year-over-year for all three months, and June's attendance was basically flat. They say the change reflects the stronger booking pace that meeting planners were indicating last fall, and they cite four major reasons for the increase: the stock market rebound, lower hotel rates, the ramp-up of the Aria project with 300,000 square feet of meeting space and 4,000 guest rooms and Nashville flooding that has brought in conventions that otherwise would have gone to Nashville.
Among the factors that the CBRE analysts foresee affecting visitor numbers in the future are airfares. "It is hard to get accurate pricing data on what the average ticket price that Las Vegas visitors are paying, but all of the evidence points to higher fares going forward," their analysis states. They say that higher airfares could lead to higher attrition rates, explaining,
"We are somewhat concerned that when corporate planners see the cost of flights they may reduce the amount of personnel they send to Las Vegas. Or at the very least, corporate planners may reduce the budgets of the personnel they do send to offset the increased cost of airfares."
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