2020 could be watershed year for Vegas

The next decade promises to be another golden age of growth for the Strip.

Steve Witkoff and hotel chain Marriott International announced Monday they will open the long-mothballed building on the Strip formerly known as the Fontainebleau in 2020.

If all the investors manage to keep to their timelines, it will be one of six major projects totaling $10 billion that will open in 2020, reshaping the city’s skyline and economy.

The projects, including three resorts, would increase Strip room availability by nearly 9,000, or about 6 percent. Strip room availability hasn’t grown in nearly a decade, helping push up the average daily room rate as visitations and occupancy rise.

The 2020 openings would lead to the the largest year-on-year increase in rooms on the Strip since 1993, when the MGM Grand, Luxor and Treasure Island opened for business, boosting the number of Strip rooms by 10,000.

The launch of those three hotels drove the largest increase in Las Vegas visitations in both absolute and percentage terms over any two-year period going back to at least 1970.

The city could see a similar jump in visitations in 2021 compared with 2019 as long as the national economy remains healthy, said David Schwartz, a Las Vegas historian and professor at UNLV.

“We did see that uptick in visitations (from new openings) until the 2000s. But since the recession, we haven’t seen that. Hopefully, we will see a return to that trend” in the next decade, he said.

The big difference between 2020 and previous hotel construction booms is the greater increase in attractions this time around, Schwartz said.

Contact Todd Prince at tprince@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0386. Follow @toddprincetv on Twitter.