Covid crushed the travel business and few cities took a bigger hit than Las Vegas. Under orders from Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), the city's casinos, hotels and restaurants closed for roughly two months in the early days of the pandemic.
The reopening of Sin City was a slow process, with the two biggest Las Vegas Strip players -- Caesars Entertainment (CZR) and MGM Resorts International (MGM) -- opening their properties in phases.
There simply were not enough tourists to justify bringing back either company's entire portfolio at once, and anyway, worker shortages would have made it very difficult to do so.
In those early days masks were required in public places and capacities were limited. Trade shows -- part of the tourism life blood of the city -- was shut down with shows going virtual or simply being canceled.
Las Vegas was open, but it was a muted open, where major resort casinos remained closed and the ones that were open hosted much smaller crowds than they normally would have.
Slowly, Las Vegas has made its way back. The Consumer Electronics Show returned in January 2022, albeit with many large companies pulling out and about 30% of regular attendance.
By March Madness and late-April's NFL Draft, the Strip was back to prepandemic crowds and all of Las Vegas was operating nearly normal (basically normal, but with some people wearing masks). Now, however, covid has flared up again and it's causing problems for three Las Vegas-based companies.
Caesars Entertainment
Covid Is a Global Problem
While covid has flared in the U.S., vaccines and treatments have kept hospitals with enough capacity to handle severe cases. That's not the case everywhere in the world and that will have a material impact on three Las Vegas-based companies that have large operations in Macau (sometimes spelled Macao), the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
The Chinese territory's secretary for administration and justice, Andrew Cheong Weng Chun, has ordered all nonessential businesses closed from July 11 through July.
"The shutdown affects three Las Vegas-based casino companies – Macao market leader Las Vegas Sands Corp., with five properties; Wynn, (WYNN) which has three resorts; and MGM Resorts International, which partners on two properties in the Chinese enclave, the only place in the country where gambling is legal," the paper reported.
Macau had shut down other nonessential businesses in June, but casinos had been exempted from that order.
"All persons must remain at home, unless for reasons of necessary work, purchase of basic goods for everyday life, or for other urgent reasons,” the Macau government mandate says. “People must wear a mask when they go out, with adults using masks of type KN95 or higher standard,” Casino.org said.
Las Vegas Sands (LVS) looks to be the most highly impacted of the three casino operators as it no longer has any Las Vegas properties.
The company has declined to comment on the Macau situation until it reports later this month, but Chief Executive Rob Goldstein did talk about the company's Macau exposure during its first-quarter earnings call.
"While the current-quarter results in Macao were impacted severely by the enhanced travel restrictions in China, customer demand and spend in Macao have proven resilient at the premium mass level from both a gaming and retail perspective in periods when the restrictions have been relaxed," he said.
"We remain confident that we return to positive cash flow in both Macao and Singapore in the future as restrictions are eased and travel and tourism recover."
Could Las Vegas See Another Covid Shutdown?
The covid pandemic has written new rules, as few people expected the first shutdown to happen.
Under current conditions, Las Vegas seems unlikely to be shut down again or even have mask mandates and other covid precautions brought back. That's largely because while covid numbers have been climbing in many parts of the U.S., the current variant does not generally lead to hospitalizations for vaccinated people.
If a deadlier variant becomes prevalent. Las Vegas and other tourism-heavy venues could see another covid shutdown, or at least a return of masks and social distancing. But unless that happens, covid is likely to remain something that's simply out there, and people might get it while they're traveling.
