Virus leaves Vegas ‘in a world of hurt’
Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world’s largest casino company, is painting a bleak picture of the U.S. gambling capital for investors, saying COVID-19 has devastated the city’s breadand-butter convention business, with no significant recovery in sight.
“We’re in a world of hurt here,” Sands President Rob Goldstein said Wednesday in a conference call, after the company reported a 97 percent drop in secondquarter revenue.
Sands’ two properties in Vegas, the Venetian and Palazzo, reopened June 4 and generated just $36 million in business during the quarter.
Unlike the global gaming capital of Macau, Vegas is dependent on business and convention groups for much of its revenue. The coronavirus pandemic has put a halt to those, along with leisure travel. And Sands suggested they won’t be coming back quickly, even with progress against the disease.
“The slowest return of our business will be largescale group business because it tends to skew younger, it’s more tech-driven and those people are more reluctant to travel,” Goldstein said.
Operators in Las Vegas can’t make money with negligible midweek hotel occupancy and half-filled properties on the weekends. Air traffic to the city is less than half of what it was, and the city is looking more like a drive-to, regional market, Goldstein said.
“Las Vegas cannot perform without a return of these segments,” he said.
Wynn Resorts Ltd. has begun furloughing workers in Las Vegas, but declined to say how many.
Wynn previously had continued to pay employees through a three-month pandemic shutdown, and its furloughs were another sign America’s gambling capital faces a long recovery.
Goldstein said he expects Vegas to have the slowest recovery of Sands’ three markets, which include Macau and Singapore.
In 2019, the company generated 63 percent of its revenue in Macau and 22 percent in Singapore.