by Calculated Risk on 2/08/2013 12:58:00 PM

Just an update ... during the recession, I wrote about the troubles in Las Vegas and included a chart of visitor and convention attendance: Lost Vegas.

Since then Las Vegas visitor traffic has recovered to a new record high in 2012.

However convention attendance was only up 1.6% from 2011 and is about 21% below the peak level in 2006.  Here is the data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.  

Click on graph for larger image.

The blue bars are annual visitor traffic (left scale), and the red line is convention attendance (right scale). 

There were 39,727,022 visitors to Las Vegas in 2012, just above the previous record of 39,196,761 in 2007.

Convention attendance was at 4,944,014 in 2012, still well below the record of 6,307,961 in 2006.

So it looks like the gamblers are back ...