US singer Taylor Swift helps boost Las Vegas tourism to pre-pandemic levels
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Taylor Swift announced at her concert on March 24 that she was the first woman to headline at Allegiant Stadium.
PHOTO: AFP
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LAS VEGAS – Two nights of American singer Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour helped to drive Las Vegas tourism to pre-Covid-19 levels in March, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
About 3.66 million people visited the city in March, up 9.6 per cent from 2022, after it played host to the concert in addition to the Pac-12 men’s college basketball tournament and a weekend of Nascar racing.
The headliners and events were paired with a “a robust convention month” that included North America’s largest construction trade show, called Conexpo-Con/AGG, which brought about 140,000 attendees, said the authority in a statement accompanying its monthly visitation statistics.
The figures are only 1.1 per cent off from March 2019, with Las Vegas among the latest cities to see a boost in tourism from Swift superfans willing to travel hundreds of miles to attend the concert series after public ticket sales were cancelled by Ticketmaster over extreme demand.
Swift, 33, announced at her March 24 show that she was the first woman to headline at Allegiant Stadium, according to Billboard magazine. The 65,000-capacity stadium, which opened in July 2020, is the home of the Las Vegas Raiders National Football League team.
Weekend hotel occupancy reached 94.5 per cent in March, the highest it has been since the 94.8 per cent it reached in February 2020 just before the pandemic shut down travel, the authority reported. Overall, hotel occupancy was 88.3 per cent in March, up from 82.2 per cent in February.
For the first three months of 2023, more than 10 million people visited the United States’ gambling capital. The record year for visitors was 2016 – at 42.9 million. Bloomberg
