Las Vegas Room Rates Decline 12%, Layoffs at Venetian, High 5 Loses Arbitration Bid

There is more grim news from Las Vegas in our latest casino industry news installment. Although the numbers aren't that large, luxury resort Venetian has announced employee layoffs. Room rates have plunged in the city too. In online sweepstakes casino news, High 5 Casino gets bad news in a lawsuit they are defending.

Let's jump into it.

Las Vegas' Venetian Casino & Hotel Announces Layoffs

One of the higher end properties on the Las Vegas Strip, the Venetian Casino & Hotel, has announced the layoff of "less than 50" of the resort's employees last week.

In an effort to play down the move, the Venetian points out that the Las Vegas Strip property employs 8,500 people; as a result, the layoffs only represent around 0.6% of their team members.

The Venetian resort isn't the only property to recently announce layoffs. In March, Resorts World announced that less than fifty full-time employees were being terminated. In May, Fountainbleau dumped several dozen table games dealers. Just last month in August, Treasure Island did a second round of employee layoffs.

In August, Time Magazine included a cover story about the downtown in Las Vegas. In the article, both employees and unions described the situation as the worst summer they have ever seen, and even worse than the situation in Las Vegas during the COVID-19 pandemic era.

J.P. Morgan Analysis Shows Plunge in Vegas Room Rates

While the chatter around town is about a fourth quarter rebound for Sin City, data compiled by the analysts at J.P. Morgan shows a different story.

For the fourth quarter, room rates are down around 12%, and it's worse if you isolate your look to December, where rates are off by 21%. The brightest spot appears to be for luxury properties, particularly on weekends, during the period surveyed.

Wynn Resorts appears to be an outlier for the data set, as year-over-year room rates for the period are actually up by one percent.