"Report: Las Vegas airport crunch could slow down tourism"

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Report: Las Vegas airport crunch could slow down tourism 
The Associated Press


LAS VEGAS (AP) - Heavy congestion at southern Nevada's largest airport could
lead to a slowdown in the number of visitors filling Las Vegas Strip hotels
as early as 2010, a report has found. 

Researchers at the investment firm Deutsche Bank say McCarran International
Airport won't be able to handle the flood of flying visitors anticipated by
hotel operators planning massive new resorts. 

If hotel development continues at its current pace, Las Vegas resorts could
face a shortfall of up to 7 million visitors annually by 2017, authors of a
Nov. 30 report said. 

That would leave operators of proposed megaresorts poaching the customer
base of existing casinos to make ends meet, the report said. 

"It is going to be extremely tight, and someone might lose," Deutsche Bank
research analyst Bill Lerner told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Saturday
editions. "There are just all kinds of implications." 

Lerner and researcher Grant Govertsen urged developers to be cautious when
planning new rooms and suggested that tourism boosters do more to increase
the number of people who come to Las Vegas by car. 

Airport officials said that the authors painted an overly pessimistic
picture of the future. 

"You could do anything with numbers depending on the assumptions you
project," said Rosemary Vassiliadis, Clark County deputy director of
aviation. 

The report projects a short-term annual shortfall of about 600,000 visitor
arrivals by 2010. But that will be alleviated by the addition of a new
terminal in 2011. 

Once the new terminal is in place technology improvements in tracking
planes, airspace expansions and airport streamlining will keep pace with
growth until 2017, Vassiliadis said. That's the earliest a proposed $7
billion airport could be operating in the nearby Ivanpah Valley. 

"There is no reason for me to believe we will not keep rolling along,"
Vassiliadis said. 

Currently more than 44 million people arrive and depart annually from
McCarran, the fifth busiest airport in the United States. 

McCarran officials say the airport can handle 53 million arrivals and
departures annually. 

Air passengers represent 47 percent of the visitors who occupy the city's
approximately 136,000 hotel rooms. 

To maintain occupancy in existing hotels and fill new rooms would take about
23.3 million visitor arrivals at McCarran in 2012, Lerner and Govertsen
estimated. 

The airport, however, will reach capacity at about 21.2 million visitor
arrivals, leaving hotel operators to look elsewhere for about 2.1 million
customers, they said. 

The capacity crunch at McCarran also could increase the cost of tickets to
Las Vegas, the report said.


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