Conventional Wisdom Now Figuring Out Las Vegas Needs To Do Something

The Las Vegas Sun had a recent article discussing how Las Vegas had to "reinvent the wheel" in order to adapt to the current economic and demographic reality. Here's the key quote from Bill Eadington of the University of Nevada, Reno:

“Newness, which has long driven Las Vegas growth, will not be part of the immediate future,” said Bill Eadington, director of UNR’s Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming. “Las Vegas may become yesterday’s news unless it can figure out a new way to reinvent itself.”

Let's take a peek at a few of the issues facing Las Vegas:

1. Beaucoup hotel rooms built during the boom added to a large existing base
2. Economic recession/depression (depending on if you have a job or not)
3. Competition for US casino patrons from tribal and other casinos closer to home
4. Competition for Asian casino patrons from newer, closer venues in Macau and Singapore
5. Vegas prices aren't all that inexpensive anymore like the old days

Other than that, what's the problem, right? We won't even mention the competition from online gambling.

With regard to the number of hotel rooms, I found this document on the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority website. In Las Vegas, the current estimated number of hotel rooms is 150,732. That is a LOT of rooms. How many? Here's how many... If the hotel rooms in Las Vegas were its own city, it would be the 158th largest city in the United States, just ahead of Alexandria, Virginia (based on 2009 Census data). As another reference point, there are 276 cities in the United States with populations over 100,000. This is just assuming one person per room. Assuming 1.5 people per room, Las Vegas hotel rooms would be the 87th largest city in the US, just ahead of Lubbock, Texas. Assuming that a hotel needs 70% occupancy to break even, Las Vegas needs on average over 105,500 of those rooms to be filled every night. That is a tall order.

I've posted quite a bit on Nevada, the impact of the economic downturn and increased competition. For those interested, you can read the most recent of the related posts, here, here, here and here.

The article discusses in very general terms what Las Vegas needs to do. The aforementioned Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority conducted a survey. The findings? Customers want transparency, value and variety. Forgive me for being obtuse but what the heck does that mean? Quoting again from the Sun article, "research indicated Las Vegas should focus its scarce marketing dollars on people who need an excuse to travel here and those interested in the city who don’t know much about it and need more details to be persuaded..." Who doesn't know about what Las Vegas is about? Go ask people at random, "what's Las Vegas all about?" You really think they'll say, "gee, I don't know anything about Las Vegas?"

Las Vegas needs to get back to fundamentals. What is Las Vegas' nickname? Yep, Sin City. The three B's - Booze (lots of it and low or no cost), Babes (see link to post below) and Bucks (good games, low takeout/don't nickel and dime your gambling patrons). That's what Las Vegas needs to get back to in order to survive, in my opinion. Unlike the experts, I give you concrete and thought out recommendations! I posted about this type of approach with regard to how the Reno and Lake Tahoe markets could combat increased competition from tribal casinos in Northern California. It may be time Las Vegas considers something similar.