Las Vegas Reinvented: From Slots to Shows

Michael Hughes -- Tradeshow Week, 2/7/2005

Las Vegas' investment in the convention and exhibition industry has transformed this industry and the city itself. What's more, the speed of the transformation has accelerated since 2000.

Back in the mid-1990s, Las Vegas was just one of a handful of leading convention and exhibition host cities. Since 2000, Las Vegas has consistently topped the annual TSW Data Book ranking as the top U.S. convention and exhibition host city. It's unlikely another city will book more shows than Las Vegas over the next few years. In fact, in a recent Tradeshow Week survey, show producers predicted that Las Vegas would be able to win convention and exhibition market share consistently for at least six more years.

Looking back, it's amazing that the city wasn't an even stronger player in the events industry earlier, that it's only been the leading host city for six years instead of the last 10 to 15. The city has had more hotel rooms than just about any other since the late 1980s, and the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo & Convention Center have been in the top rank of venues for many years.

The historic and continual population migration westward, especially to the southwest, has played a part in the rise of Las Vegas as an entertainment and business tourism behemoth. It was really just a matter of time before a western city took the leading convention city title away from East Coast and Midwestern cities.

The fact that Las Vegas' rise as the leading convention and tradeshow town took so long is another indication that the events industry is a rather conservative one that is slow to change. Of course, most leading conventions and exhibitions have dates locked in many years in advance.

Even with three massive convention centers and many small and midsized hotel exhibit halls today, Las Vegas' biggest strength as a convention and tradeshow destination, in my opinion, is its 130,000-plus hotel rooms. Especially when you consider how many tens of thousands of rooms are in the moderately priced range.

Show producers tell TSW that most of their top site-selection criteria relate to hotel room price, capacity and quality issues. Most cities have ample exhibit space capacity, but none have anywhere near the concentrated number of hotel rooms that Las Vegas has. I've always believed the city's close proximity to the massive Southern California market was also a key attribute.

The issue today for the events industry is how long Las Vegas will continue to win market share from other cities, and whether the city's event industry labor force and infrastructure can keep up with the construction growth throughout the region. We hear rumblings from time to time that Las Vegas' residential, commercial and hotel-based building boom is competing with the convention and tradeshow bookings boom for labor resources. Potentially inadequate labor resources, along with the often crowded and rowdy Strip experience, are issues for the city's convention leaders to consider going forward.

For cities that compete with Las Vegas, ironically, the only situation worst than Las Vegas winning event market share would be Las Vegas starting to lose market share. This would be a show producer's dream, but could knock another city's convention center and CVB out of the events business. Look at how price competition, driven by low-cost market leaders such as Wal-Mart and Southwest Airlines, has remade the retail and airline industries.

Still, other cities and event-related organizations can learn from the Las Vegas winning streak. For one, Las Vegas is the only U.S. city with a strong, memorable and aggressive branding campaign (the over-quoted "What happens here, stays here"). Obviously, significant television advertising has helped — and expect to see more in this centennial year of the city's founding.

Also, it's the only large U.S. city that truly has a tourism and hospitality culture and, at the same time, a near unanimous understanding of the importance of the events industry.

Of course, most cities don't have the resources or unique characteristics of Las Vegas and simply can't or wouldn't want to replicate that culture. Yet the key lesson that Las Vegas teaches the events industry is the importance of being able to reinvent, change strategies quickly and make large calculated bets from time to time. When slot machines became a commodity due to the rapid expansion of gaming around the country, Las Vegas redoubled efforts to book meetings and conventions.

For me, the city is all about bold action and speed to market — the ability to switch strategic directions on a dime, or even a quarter.