LVCVA continues press for more lucrative international tourists

By Richard N. Velotta

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011 | 2:05 a.m.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority will continue to press for more international visitors to Southern Nevada, counting on their propensity to spend more and stay longer than domestic travelers.

In a report to the LVCVA board of directors Tuesday morning, Cathy Tull, senior vice president of marketing, said the agency is looking to get more out of its 12 contracted international offices on five continents.

Those contracted companies — based in Toronto; Mexico City; London; Tokyo; Munich, Germany; Seoul, South Korea; Sydney, Australia; Dublin, Ireland;

Shanghai, China; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Moscow, Russia; and New Delhi, India — are responsible for fielding press inquiries, scheduling familiarization tours, presenting events for their local travel vendors, distributing collateral materials and convincing travel writers to feature Las Vegas.

In 2010, the international offices assisted in producing 3,600 news stories — roughly 10 a day — and set up 135 familiarization tours to Las Vegas.

Their efforts resulted in an 81 percent increase in “earned media” — stories and photos that weren’t paid advertising — and a 111 percent increase in impressions, any published image relating to Las Vegas.

The public relations efforts of the offices resulted in an estimated 7 billion global impressions of Las Vegas and $500 million worth of earned media, resulting in a return on investment of about $421 for every dollar spent.

The 12 international offices have contracts with the LVCVA that expire in June 2012. Board members said how well the offices perform would be key to extending the contracts and that there would be no automatic renewals.

Las Vegas had an estimated 5.1 million international visitors in 2009, the most recent year statistics have been compiled. They spent an estimated $5.1 billion for lodging, dining, shopping, sightseeing, local transportation and gambling, directly supporting 43,000 local tourism jobs.

The 2009 international visitation represented 14 percent of Las Vegas’ total visitor count but 22 percent of visitor spending. The LVCVA says international travelers spend an average $1,300 per trip compared with $900 per trip by domestic travelers.

The 14 percent visitation total is a 1 percent decrease from 2008, when 5.6 million international visitors, or 15 percent of the total, came to Southern Nevada. The LVCVA is trying to bump the percentage of international travelers to 20 percent within five years.

Canada, the United Kingdom and Mexico are Las Vegas’ biggest international markets. The abundance of nonstop flights from those markets has helped make them so successful.

As of January, 70 percent of McCarran International Airport’s international seat capacity came from Canadian cities. Trailing Canada are Great Britain, 19 percent; Mexico, 8 percent; Germany, 2 percent; and South Korea, 1 percent.

Tull said international flights, some seasonal, are increasing between December 2010 and July 2011:

• Between Dec. 10 and April 28, Canadian discount carrier Westjet has added two flights a week between Ottawa and Las Vegas. Westjet is one of McCarran’s busiest international carriers with 73 flights and 10,618 seats a week coming into the market.

• Between Dec. 25 and the end of February, CVC Brasil Operadora e Agência de

Viagens, a subsidiary of the New York-based Carlyle Group and the largest tour operator in Brazil, is running charter flights to and from Las Vegas.

• Beginning March 30, Mexican discount airline Volaris will begin daily nonstop flights between Guadalajara and Las Vegas. Volaris is partnering with Southwest Airlines on connecting international flights, but Southwest officials said today the Las Vegas flight is not a part of the connecting service, which is being initiated through Los Angeles International Airport, Oakland and San Jose, Calif.

• Virgin Atlantic Airlines, which already flies daily between London’s Gatwick International Airport and Las Vegas, will add two flights a week from Manchester, England, beginning April 3.

• XL Airways, which started seasonal nonstop flights between Paris and Las Vegas in May, will run them twice a week between May 23 and Sept. 6.

• British Airways, which successfully launched daily nonstop flights between London’s Heathrow International Airport and Las Vegas in 2009, is adding seats in that market in June by using a 434-seat Boeing 747 instead of the 340-seat Boeing 777 it now uses.

• German charter operator Condor, which has seasonal service between

Franfurt, Germany, and Las Vegas, will operate three flights a week instead of two from June 28 through Sept. 6.

The 138,056 additional seats resulting from the extra flights are expected to benefit

Southern Nevada to the tune of $105.1 million in 2011.

Tull said adding international flights has challenges. For example, the LVCVA is working to improve the visa acquisition process in China and Brazil.

In Brazil, there are only four places for residents to acquire visas for international travel. LVCVA President and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter, as chairman of the Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, is urging Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke to address customer service issues for visa processing.

The Great Recession, felt as severely in other countries as it has here, is another challenge, she said. And Las Vegas is competing with other gaming destinations, such as Macau and Singapore, as well as other U.S. tourism destinations, such as Los Angeles and New York.

But Las Vegas has some advantages.

The city’s international gateway at McCarran will get a facelift in 2012 with the opening of Terminal 3, which will have facilities to process six international arrivals at once. Gates at Terminal 2, the existing international arrival area, can accommodate only two flights at a time.

Tull also is optimistic that the marketing of the United States abroad will pick up when the Corporation for Travel Promotion selects an executive director in a couple of months and spending generated by the Travel Promotions Act begins. Las Vegas resident Stephen Cloobeck, CEO of Diamond Resorts International, is chairman of the corporation’s board of directors.

Las Vegas also has some long-range goals to attract more international flights to McCarran when the Worldwide Routes Development Forum meets in the city in 2013.