by Calculated Risk on 2/19/2018 04:43:00 PM

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 recovered to new record highs.

However, in 2017, visitor traffic declined 1.7% compared to 2016, but was still 8% above the pre-recession peak.

Convention attendance is now at record levels. 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). 

Convention attendance was up 5.3% in 2017 compared to 2016, and was at a new record high.

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.