How big must a Vegas convention be to make it necessary to avoid Vegas?
I’m рlаnnіng a trip tο Vegas next year. I read іn thе dеаr οld Lonely Planet thаt іt’s worth avoiding Vegas whеn thеrе′s “a bіg convention οn” – overpriced hotels, nο availability fοr restaurants аnd shows etc.
Qυеѕtіοn іѕ, hοw bіg іѕ “bіg”? Having never bееn, dοеѕ 20,000 extra people іn town cause a problem, οr gο unnoticed? 10,000? 5,000?
Thanks tο everyone fοr уουr views!
Anything over 9000.
Well well buddy, Las Vegas avoidance big is more like in the 100s of thousands. THat is Las Vegas big! If its under that its pretty normal.
You will know how big a convention is by the amount for a room. Compare different time of the month you plan on visiting. Biggest are between Nov. 3 and mid January. You have to also realize that there are normally more than one convention going on at the same time. The hotels know well in advance what conventions are coming and raise their prices well in advance.
There are dozens of conventions in Las Vegas every month that are just part of the usual order of business, but the “big” ones that have 100,000+ attendees start being noticeable by even the casual tourists in town. However in today’s economy, there are only a handful left that are still that size.
These are the big ones in the next 6 months:
SEMA in Nov 2010
CES in Jan 2011
Conexp-Con/Agg in Mar 2011
You can search for dates here that will give you a list of every convention scheduled, and the estimated number of people attending each one: http://www.lvcva.com/meetings/convention-calendar.jsp
As the other respondent said, look at different date and chose accordingly.
You can also check the Las Vegas Conference & Visitors bureau for conferences and size.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Las Vegas is having a great conference experience for the last couple of years. MAGIC (clothing) use to have 150,000 people and is now around 60,000. CES was so low it was basically cancelled but it has been building back up, I still don’t think it is anywhere about 30,000.
No conference is large enough to make you avoid Las Vegas. Even when it is crowded it isn’t too crowded. More people means more opportunities for fun.
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There are many things that can cause the prices to go up. Conventions, weekends, holidays, event days, etc.
The best thing you can do is, if there’s a hotel you like, just check the availability calendars when you want to check prices. It’ll give you prices for each day so you know which days are cheap and which days to avoid, gets rid of the hassle of worrying about convention dates.
Anyways, you can always find the cheapest hotel prices and specials at http://www.mycheapvegas.com
Cheers!
Yes…there are BIG conventions in Vegas.
By most city standards, a 5,000 attendee convention is BIG. In Las Vegas, known as ‘The Convention Capital of the World,’ a convention starts to be considered to be big once you get over 10,000 or so. I am ‘affiliated’ with a conventon that brings about 15,000 attendees (plus spouses and friends)…but is very heavy on Audio Visual needs. There are “a few” conventions that are 50,000 plus…but not many. Typically, Las Vegas has a series of ‘smaller’ conventions going on at the same time. 5k here, 10k there, a few hundred and maybe even 20k somewhere else…that can have the same effect.
What you SHOULD be looking at is SPECIFIC PROPERTIES…because we have well over 100,000 hotel rooms in Vegas. With many having two beds and occupany ranging from 2-4 people in most rooms…we can easily accomodate 150 – 200,000 people (Like new year’s eve…typically over 250k on the strip!).
Properties with ‘room blocks’ for the conventions will have higher rates…the properties that are not connected with the conventions will typically have the lower rates. So, only during the largest of all convention-sized catagories does the ‘whole town’ fill up and ‘jack up’ the rates (Well, sporting events too!).
So, the rule….use a travel agent that knows the town! (ahem!
Like my company!) Or, spend a lot of time shopping all the different properties, airfares, convention dates, etc and making ‘best guesses’ from the pictures on the web. (No extra cost for ‘our’ services in nearly all cases.)
Either way…Las Vegas is nearly always a fun spot that can fit nearly any budget!
There has never been a convention large enough to avoid coming to Las Vegas. Vegas can accommodate and additional 50,000 tourist before getting crowded. There are plenty of restaurants, nightclubs and hotel rooms to accommodate multiple conventions at once. Plan ahead and book now. Go to Vegas.com and search room rates using the descending price option then go to opentable.com and make table reservations. Don’t wait until the last minutes to book a plane ticket or hotel room. Vegas is always busy every weekend. Holiday weekends like New Year’s Eve, Halloween weekend and 4th of July draw more tourist than a single convention such as SEMA or PBR.