By: Las Vegas Now Staff
The July 4th holiday weekend should be a boom for Las Vegas casinos. The fourth falling on a Friday made a three day weekend — throw in deep discounts and deals being offered in packages to stay at Las Vegas Strip casinos and it means a busy weekend.
From Mandalay Bay to Wynn Las Vegas to the Stratosphere, Las Vegas has become a bargain hunters paradise. The price of a room can get you show tickets, dinner credits, even gas cards, as well as other incentives.
Rising gas prices that have vacation drivers thinking twice has been countered by offers of gas cards from $30 to $100 for a stay on the Las Vegas Strip. The pain of rising costs of airfare has been eased by dropping room rates about 7-percent this year.
Las Vegas casinos are among the best in the world at adapting to the changing market.
“I think the deals are a little more prevalent,” said Robert Eldridge, visiting from Pennsylvania. He is one of a half a million visitors expected in Las Vegas this weekend.
Still there are fewer tourists so far this year. And yes — they are spending less. But the numbers are only off slightly in the kind of depressed national economy Senator Harry Reid says we have not seen in 40 years.
“I think Vegas is such a great destination that you decide you want to come here for various reasons. We did take advantage of some rates. There are some very good rates,” said Eldridge.
“$400 dollars, four days and three nights. We went through Southwest also. It was a combined deal,” said Paige German, visitor from California.
“We came as a group. But we got a good deal to come down here,” said Zula Terry, visitor from North Carolina.
As long as there are visitors, all the casinos will still employ hundreds of thousands of people. Nationally the economy shed jobs for the past six straight months — 62,000 jobs were lost in June alone.
The major casinos also had some layoffs but brought the prices down to keep the overall local economic engine running.
“Maybe they are discounting the room rate a little bit, but they are certainly throwing in extras – food credits, free drinks, maybe an upgrade,” said Eldridge.
Just enough to get Eldridge and hopefully others to come back and make a second visit to Las Vegas this year.
The casinos hope to continue to keep the hotel rates in Las Vegas at a lower level so people still visit. Tourism is still the life blood here with about 65-percent of people working directly for or in industry related to the casinos.
Email your comments to Reporter Edward Lawrence.
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