Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

New Year’s rooms still available; crowd estimates too optimistic

Experts preparing for the arrival of New Year's Eve party-goers are starting to second-guess earlier estimates of 750,000 people invading the Strip.

But agencies getting ready for the millennium celebration are "preparing for the worst and hoping for the best."

Rob Powers, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said he expects the city to fill up as it always has for New Year's Eve, but earlier estimates of three-quarters of a million people showing up may be off.

"There's a surprisingly high percentage of people that plan to stay home," Powers said. "They're looking at this (the arrival of the new millennium) as a spiritual kind of holiday."

Powers said the phenomenon isn't unique to Las Vegas. He said a New York City millennium celebration is being moved to a smaller venue from the Jacob Javits Convention Center because advance ticket sales are off.

The LVCVA is confident that at least 280,000 people will be in Las Vegas New Year's Eve. Powers said based on previous New Year's Eve experiences and calculations from existing data, the LVCVA is projecting an average of more than two people will occupy each of the city's approximately 120,000 hotel rooms.

Overall, there are more rooms available this year than last with the openings of Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, Paris and the Resort at Summerlin. Those openings more than offset the closures of the Continental, the Maxim and some rooms at the Stardust.

Powers said the agency expects an additional 14,000 will arrive and spend the night with family and friends in the city. He added that it's hard to predict how many local residents will go to the Strip for the celebration.

One of the keys to the estimates is the assumption that rooms will be full -- and right now, that isn't the case. Powers said the LVCVA is getting the word out that not every room is sold.

"Who would have thought a year ago that a month before the millennium celebration that there would be rooms available?" Powers asked.

Whether the big crowds arrive or not, agencies dealing with a crush of people are getting ready.

Information officers for Clark County, Metro and the Clark County Fire Department joined Powers in a panel discussion about the city's preparation for New Year's Eve at a Friday luncheon sponsored by the Las Vegas Valley Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

Steve Meriwether, Metro's public information officer, said emergency response agencies and government officials have been working for three years to prepare for the millennium celebration, which has the uncertainty of Y2K bug concerns hovering over it.

Meriwether said Las Vegas will have the advantage of being in the Pacific time zone, enabling officials to observe three hours of celebrations on the East Coast and Midwest and 18 hours' worth overseas before it happens in Las Vegas.

"If buildings start exploding in Times Square," joked Steve La-Sky, public information officer for the Clark County Fire Department, "we'll have time to get the hell out of Dodge."

About 2,500 of Metro's 3,600 employees will be working New Year's Eve and about 1,100 will be stationed along the Strip.

Meriwether said Metro expects congestion to get so great on the Strip that the famed boulevard will be closed. Portions of the Strip are closed every New Year's Eve -- it's unclear how much of the road will be closed this year.

Meriwether said crowd volume will dictate at what point emergency officials close the road. A 2.7-mile barrier will be erected to keep a lane open for emergency vehicles.

Doug Bradford, director of public communications for Clark County, said an increased emphasis on providing official information will occur through the county. Representatives from several organizations, from police agencies to utility companies, will be available at a county command post to disseminate official information.

Press conferences would be scheduled around the clock to keep people informed of any problems that develop, whether they be from crowds or Y2K problems.

Meriwether said panic is the biggest concern police will have on New Year's Eve. People may worry, Meriwether said, that a routine accident -- a car hitting a utility pole and knocking out power, for example -- could be construed as a Y2K-related disaster and create worse problems.

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