Travel news in brief
Chips are down for Las Vegas
Gambling tourism is going out of fashion and Las Vegas is suffering as consumers cut back, pushing the sector's stocks down - 94 per cent in the case of Las Vegas Sands - and resulting in job cuts and cancelled development projects globally. In previous economic downturns, casinos had been hailed as almost recession-proof. But the latest recession has the US state of Nevada trembling. December 2008 saw the state's Gaming Control Board report a 22.3 percent slide in winnings during October, the largest percentage decline since the board began producing monthly reports in the early 1980s. Macau and Hong Kong have also seen business decline.
NYC sets record highs
New York City attracted 47 million visitors and $30 billion in total spending in 2008, both record highs. International tourism accounted for the increase, with an additional one million international visitors visiting the city last year. New York City has surpassed Orlando and Las Vegas in garnering the most overseas visitors. And despite the economic downturn, NYC's hotel room occupancy rate beat the national US average by 20 per cent. The results were announced this week by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYC Company, the city's tourism promotion office.