By KEN RITTER, Associated Press
LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) — After meeting virtually a year ago, casino industry officials and vendors are convening in person this week in Las Vegas for an annual conference — amid rigorous coronavirus mask and vaccination requirements — riding a revival of gaming following coronavirus shutdown.
As he greeted roughly 500 people in a ballroom on Tuesday, American Gaming Association chief Bill Miller said, “We are happy to be back here, live, in Las Vegas.” At the Global Gaming Expo at The Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip, chairs were arranged in groups of two, three, and four.
“I mean, there’s nothing like getting back together in person,” Miller said, calling four days featuring an expansive trade show, breakout meetings and keynote speeches “a lot better than being on a Zoom (videoconference) call.”
“A year ago, this hall was empty,” he said.
In recent years, the event at The Venetian Expo Center has attracted up to 27,000 attendees. According to Allison Nielsen, a spokesman for the gaming industry, current attendance data will not be available until later this week.
Attendees were granted green wrist bands after submitting proof of immunization, many of which were done through the cellphone app Clear Health Pass.
Nonsmoking campaigners spoke at a separate panel at the expo about their achievements in persuading politicians in various states and tribal land administrations around the country to make casinos smoke-free, as well as their efforts to get smoking prohibited in casinos in Nevada and New Jersey.
“Workers should never have to choose between a paycheck and their health,” said Cynthia Hallett, head of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.
In Nevada, casino giant MGM Resorts International reopened the renovated Park MGM hotel, formerly the Monte Carlo, a year ago as the first smoke-free venue on the Las Vegas Strip. Many hotels ban smoking in rooms. But casinos are exempt under state law from public smoking restrictions.
In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy allowed a temporary casino smoking ban enacted amid pandemic rules to expire in time for the Fourth of July holiday.
“I couldn’t believe that after a year of fresh air, the smoke was coming back,” LaMont White, an Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino dealer for 36 years, told reporters Tuesday in Las Vegas. He said lawmakers should think of pregnant casino workers “forced to feed her unborn child secondhand smoke every day to make a living.”
“I think they see us as numbers on a bill or a bottom line,” White said, “not as human beings with families that love and depend on us.”
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat who ordered Nevada casinos and most other businesses closed from mid-March to June 2020, and U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, whose home district includes the Las Vegas Strip, were the morning’s featured speakers, talking about Nevada’s accelerating recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nevada casinos in August recorded more than $1 billion in house winnings for a sixth straight month, as gambling statewide continued to return to pre-pandemic levels, state regulators reported last week.
Tourism officials tallied nearly 3 million visitors during the month, up 95% from August 2020 but down just 16% from August 2019.
Nationally, Miller reported last month that casinos had their best second quarter in history in April, May and June, taking in $13.6 billion and putting it on track to eclipse its best year ever: $43.6 billion in 2019.
Titus, a Democrat, the longest-serving Nevada lawmaker in Washington and a member of the Congressional Gaming Caucus, noted that hotel and casino closures in tourism-dependent Nevada drove the unemployment rate in the state to more than 30% in April 2020, the highest in the nation.
“We have come back,” she said of a figure that is now 7.7% but still higher than the national average.
Titus also credited businesses and casino owners who have required employees to be vaccinated or receive regular COVID-19 tests with helping to ensure that tourists, gamblers and conventioneers can visit her hometown and remain healthy.
“If they come here, that’s the thing I think that we have to really recover,” she said.
