A view of the baggage claim area at McCarran International Airport Thursday, May 20, 2021.
Monday, Aug. 30, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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New York residents Luca Finocchio and Chiara Missaglia recently flew to Las Vegas for a quick, two-day getaway, fully vaccinated and fully aware of the dangers posed by the delta variant of the coronavirus.
“We feel comfortable, but we know people are still getting sick, so we’re still wearing masks everywhere we go,” Missaglia said. “I didn’t travel at all during the pandemic, not until earlier this summer.”
With cases of the more-contagious delta variant surging, troubling signs are emerging that airline bookings are slowing and more people are canceling flights. That could spell trouble for tourist destinations like Las Vegas, which was hit especially hard early in the pandemic.
Southwest Airlines, the busiest carrier at McCarran International Airport, is bracing for a slowdown, according to an Aug. 11 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company noted it was dealing with a “deceleration in close-in bookings and an increase in close-in trip cancellations in August.”
The trend is “believed to be driven by the recent rise in COVID-19 cases associated with the delta variant,” the airline said.
Any slowdown could act as a speed bump for Las Vegas’s recovery. Southwest offers up to 200 daily departures from McCarran.
On Tuesday, just over 1.4 million travelers passed through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at U.S. airports, the lowest daily total since May 18.
August passenger traffic numbers for the Las Vegas airport won’t come out until next month. For July, McCarran reported about 4.1 million arriving and departing passengers, down 8% from the pre-pandemic July 2019 figure of 4.5 million.
Air travel virtually came to a standstill in Las Vegas last year after Strip resorts were ordered closed from mid-March to June 4 to combat the spread of the virus. In April 2020, about 153,000 passengers passed through McCarran, the lowest for any month during the pandemic.
Tori Emerson Barnes, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Travel Association, said travel experts have again noted a downward trend in air travel in recent weeks.
“We’re seeing some folks on the domestic leisure side postponing their trips over the next couple of months as a result of the delta variant. That’s a concern,” Barnes said. “We’re very reliant right now on domestic leisure travel.”
“We’re strongly encouraging, as an industry, that folks get vaccinated. We think that’s the best way to get back to a more normal environment,” she said.
The association is also monitoring business travel, Barnes said. The association doesn’t expect that segment to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024 or 2025, she said.
“We’re encouraging people not to backslide with business meetings and events,” Barnes said. “Business meetings and international travel, which make up 40% to 60% of revenues for hotels and airlines, are two very important pillars of the travel industry.”
A number of conventions have resumed in Las Vegas, including the International Pizza Expo and Conference earlier this month at the Las Vegas Convention Center. But the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has yet to resume tracking convention attendance in the wake of the nearly complete shutdown of the convention industry in early 2020.
Just over 3.3 million people visited Las Vegas in July, down 10% from July 2019, according to the latest figures available from the LVCVA.
Through the first six months of this year, about 16.8 million have visited Las Vegas, according to the authority. In 2019, over 42 million visited Las Vegas, though that number dropped to 19 million in 2020 because of the pandemic.
