(Bloomberg) -- Trip cancellations and postponements in the wake of last month's mass shooting prompted a 4.2 percent decline in visitors to Las Vegas for the month of October.
Some 3.6 million people visited the city last month, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said Thursday. Even a 36 percent surge in convention attendees, to 687,000 people, wasn't enough to overcome the fallout from the massacre. Gambling revenue on the Las Vegas Strip fell 6.1 percent to $528.7 million, according to data released separately by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
A gunman firing from MGM Resorts International's Mandalay Bay resort killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more on the night of Oct. 1. Las Vegas hotels remained open for business, but casino operators stopped marketing for a week or more out of respect for those killed and injured.
MGM Chief Executive Officer James Murren said on a Nov. 8 conference call that cancellations subsided by mid-October, with the exception of Mandalay Bay, where the company took longer to resume marketing. “We've seen bookings improve, our business improve, here in November,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles at cpalmeri1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Crayton Harrison at tharrison5@bloomberg.net.
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