Southern Nevada saw a rare falloff in visitation in June, but you wouldn’t know it from the number of passengers who passed through the region’s McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, which reported its busiest month ever.
The overall visitor account, compared to June 2016, dropped 2.3 percent to 3.7 million arrivals. But to put that in perspective it was still the region’s second-best June on record, topped only by June 2016.
Convention attendance was off 2.4 percent to 454,975 as a result of a decline in the number of small meetings staged in Las Vegas. There were 1,323 fewer of them compared to last year.
Not surprisingly, citywide hotel and motel occupancy was off 0.9 percentage points to 92.6 percent for the month, partially offset by a 0.2 percent increase in the average daily room rate to $121.47.
For the first six months of 2017, visitor volume is running flat at 21.2 million tourists. Convention attendance is up 2.1 percent to 3.6 million. Occupancy is flat at 89.6 percent, but ADR is up 4.1 percent to $132.38.
Arrivals and departures at McCarran totaled just under 4.2 million, topping the record set in June 2016 by 64,000. Domestic flights were up 1.9 percent to 3.8 million. International was down 1.7 percent to 307,962.
Year to date, the airport is ahead of 2016 by 500,000 passengers, a six-month total of 23.8 million, and airport officials say they expect 2017 will break the record of 47.8 million set in 2007.
On the gaming side, the financial year ending in June saw Southern Nevada up 3 percent to $9.9 billion in revenue, boosted by a 2.9 percent increase on the Las Vegas Strip to $6.5 billion and a 10.7 percent spike in Downtown Las Vegas.
Across Nevada, win was up 2.9 percent over 2015-16 to $11.4 billion.
