Las Vegas is famous for its magic acts and currently, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city is bracing for its new trick: Magically making meetings materialize. The city was on a roll until last winter, expecting a record year beating the 42.5 million visitor numbers of 2019. Then COVID-19 hit and the people disappeared. Visitor counts went down to 12.7 million as of August from 28.4 million for the same months in 2019. Hotel occupancy vanished by more than 50 percent.
For a city built for and based on attracting tourism from far and wide, these numbers did not sit well. But the city is also based on brilliant pivots and bellwether reinventions that shape trends and headline the news. The pandemic, while a formidable challenge, may just be another era for Las Vegas. This is a city that rose from the dust and has lived to face down organized and disorganized crime, recessions, inflations, mass shootings, wars, sell-offs and buy-ups, droughts and a climate that could welcome the devil. But every time, it comes out on top.
Bringing back business travelers and meetings attendees may be the neon gaming mecca’s best bet amid the rabid unpredictability of the coronavirus culprit. It’s a big job and many destinations are competing to do this. But they do not have the buying power and fleet-footed visionaries available to create meaningful moves. Las Vegas does. The city that turned dining into celebrity chef entertainment and hotels into monuments of architectural imagination has yet more cards to turn and rabbits to pull out of thin air.
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