Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Holiday weekend: Here come the tourists — and high temperatures

The Strip From Above

Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.com

A bird’s-eye view of Luxor at dusk, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016.

Memorial Day will be hotter and more crowded on the Las Vegas Strip than last year, if weathermen and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority are to be believed.

Weather.com is predicting Monday will be the hottest day of the weekend — with temperatures reaching the 100 degree mark (beating last year’s 93) — for the 328,000 tourists the authority estimates will be in town.

That number is a record and 0.9 percent larger than last year when 325,000 tourists visited Las Vegas. While that may not seem like a large increase, it’s significant given Las Vegas’ position in a post-recession economy.

“We’re in a time frame where 0.9 percent is a strong number,” said Kevin Bagger, the executive director of the LVCVA’s Research Center.

Year-to-year increases were frequently larger before the recession when Las Vegas was consistently adding new resorts, Bagger said. Increases in room inventory drove the numbers upward.

But now, with so many large resorts already in place, the increases won’t be as large. “The numbers aren’t as mathematically dramatic,” he said. “But we’re just a bigger destination.”

It’s good, Bagger said, to keep things in perspective. “The level of occupancy we achieve in Las Vegas just isn’t achieved in other destinations,” he said. “We forget that 96 percent, 95 percent occupancy levels are typically unheard of anywhere else.”

The LVCVA is not alone in predicting a busy weekend. Both the Nevada and California highway patrols say they are expecting high traffic volumes along the Interstate 15 corridor into Nevada from Southern California.

As a result, both agencies will be increasing enforcement along the freeway, especially around Primm.

And the rest of summer may be similar, according to Booking.com. According to the site’s data, Las Vegas will be one of 2017’s top domestic travel destinations along with Orlando, New York City and Myrtle Beach, S.C.

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