Tourists are coming to Las Vegas – and their number remains high. Only in April, 4.8 million passengers passed through Harry Reid International Airport, as the Clark County Department of Aviation stated on Tuesday, May 23.?
The huge increase compared to the previous year:
Compared to April last year, the traffic at the airport increased by 12.8%. In March, the number of passengers was even higher – 4.94 million.
We still don’t know how many passengers were tourists since the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) and the Nevada Gaming Control Board still didn’t release their reports about the numbers of visitors and casino gaming statistics. It’s expected that they’ll announce the numbers during the next week, as a part of monthly tourism indicators.
However, what we do know is that the number of tourists increased by 21.9% compared to last year when, during the first four months of the year, Las Vegas visited 18.3 million people.
It’s expected that the numbers will increase even more since 335.000 visitors are expected to come for the Memorial Day weekend. Per LVCVA’s research, the number of visitors will be 3.7% higher than last year. It will impact the hotel industry as well, so it’s expected that 93% of Las Vegas hotel rooms will be occupied, which is, again, 0.4% more than last year.
This will mean a lot for the overall economy of the city since the tourists are expected to spend about $387.3 million during the extended weekend, and the total estimated impact on the community will be about $684.4 million.
Domestic and foreign tourists:
Airport officials expect that the average number of visitors a day will be about 600.000 during the holiday. They warned passengers that the airport would be more crowded than usual.
The number of tourists from the USA increased by 12.2%. Only in April, the number of USA residents was 4.5 million. The increase is even bigger when we look at the total number of domestic tourists during the year, which was 17 million – an increase of 20.1% compared to the results from 2022.?
There also were more foreign tourists than usual – 33.3% more than in 2022. In April, Las Vegas visited 266.536 of them, and in four months, their number was 960.486, which is 75.1% more than last year.
The largest number of visitors came with Southwest Airlines, a domestic low-cost airline, and it was followed by Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines. The reason behind it is that the companies increased the number of seats and flights toward Las Vegas.
When it comes to foreign companies, the most successful were Air Canada, Flair, and Westjet. Among the European airlines, the most tourists came via British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, KLM, and Edelweiss, all of which recorded an increased number of sold tickets.