Nevada conventions and other gatherings can now include as many as 1,000 people, up from 50, as long as the group is separated into sections of 250 individuals, including servers, according to recently revised orders from governor Steve Sisolak.
That was not good enough for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which took its ten-day National Rodeo Finals from Las Vegas to Arlington, Texas, last month, where restrictions are looser.
It was the first time since 1985 that the rodeo, which drew 170,000 fans last year, was not held in Las Vegas.
It also was the last large event that had been scheduled for Las Vegas during the pandemic and now it, too, has left town.
Caesar’s Entertainment Inc., which owns the Bally’s, Caesar’s Palace, Paris, and Planet Hollywood hotels and casinos in the city, reports having 2,500 meetings and conventions canceled since February.
Group bookings made up about a third of reservations at Caesar’s Palace alone last year.
Conventions and other group events accounted for 30 percent of reservations at Caesar’s Palace hotel and casino last year, the company said.
Bookings for 2021’s first quarter are about half of what they were a year earlier, according to Michael Massari, the company’s sales director told the Wall Street Journal.
The company, however, has signed more contracts for events further in the future than during any other six-month period in its history, Massari noted, indicating that the city has kept its allure.
Of Las Vegas’s 42.5 million visitors in 2019, 6.6 were there to attend conventions, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported.
TREND FORECAST: We had long forecast the destruction of the trade show and convention business when politicians launched the COVID War. It is now just making the news.
From the hospitality sector to restaurants, from the workforces to the chain of product and service providers, the impact and implications on these sectors will not rebound until people again feel safe to travel, governments lift capacity restriction, and the old normal replaces the New Abnormal.
