Las Vegas: On Pace for Record Convention Attendance in 2017

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 new record highs.

As of July, visitor traffic is running slightly behind the record set in 2016 and on pace to be 10% above the pre-recession peak.

And convention attendance is now at record levels too. 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). 

At this pace, convention attendance will set another new record in 2017, and be 5% above the pre-recession peak set in 2006.

There were many housing related conventions during the housing bubble, so it took some time for convention attendance to recover.  But attendance has really picked up over the last three years.