Vegas Cool Down???

[parisbill]

I return to Las Vegas about every three months and enjoy the escape. Also have business there... sort of a two for one deal for me.

The concerns of the gaming industry for the next 6 to 12 months are focused on gas and heating price increases and their respective influence on property customer count and play.

In the last traffic counts....Atlantic City traffic was down by over 8% but Las Vegas was up by over 5%. Foxwoods was down in August as well..

I personally think that the big gaming/hotel complexes will be the ones most affected while the smaller local casinos will survive the downturn. (For the record... I'm a stockholder in the Boyd Group).

I'm interested how others feel about the challenges of high gas and heating prices and their influence on going to Casinos,,, both local and to vacation centers as Las Vegas??

Will be in LV the week of December 11th.....

parisbill

[Wilbur95]

Bill I was concerned about this as well as an investor in gaming stocks (need to hedge my gambling trips to Vegas) and sold out of most of my positions after Katrina as I expected some weakness. However, I feel that the long term prospects still look great and now is a great time to get back in. My favorites are Harrah's and Boyd's (both also pay dividend) which I repurchased last Thursday 10/13. I don't expect these stocks to soar back to thier previous levels but I feel the long term outlook still looks great for these companies. My view is to take advantage of this short term uncertainty and weakness in the stock prices of gaming stocks. The one thing I know for sure is that I have mace alot more money investing in gaming stocks than I have won playing in the casino. I look at the popularity of this site alone as reason to believe that the ganing industry has a very healthy future. Hope I'm right.

[tlcrnicu]

:p
WOW, It sure is funny to hear about how are traffic is in comparison to the strip and AC... We live within 15 mins of Mohegan and about a 30 min ride to Foxwoods. Love the Sun, dislike Foxwoods. But LOVE Vegas, Baby! I sure haven't noticed a decrease in the amount of traffic in the area, if anything, it seems to have worsened. Although, Foxwoods, especially, is in a very rural area as opposed to the other gambling meccas. Our traffic worsens in the summer, not particularly for the casinos, but because I95 is the only corridor between the cape and NYC! We often hear stories of how many people are struck by cars on the strip by our cab drivers, mostly as a warning I assume. And none of them have been as heartless or crass as Mr PapaGeorgio's was. We are always very, very careful when there, not being "city slickers"!:D
By the same token, I WISH we could buy stock in our local casinos, their revenues are posted in the local papers quarterly and they only go up, up, up!