This is John Batchel, colleague Gene Marks, looking at the year over year in Las Vegas. The numbers are up compared to 2019 not so. However, Gene points out that we're getting closer to, 2019 is the bellwether before the pandemic. Everything was ruined by the pandemic, and the mystery of that has yet to be solved.

What can be solved is America is getting back on its feet, and Las Vegas is a leader.

Here's Gene Marks on the 2024 year in Las Vegas, looking at 2025.

The small businesses of America will prosper and running association events in Las Vegas is a

great idea. More of this tonight. Yeah, year over year is up in Vegas, which is great news.

Obviously, you know, all the numbers are well beyond the pandemic years. But the numbers that you

have to really look at is the two,

2024 visitors to Las Vegas,

these are convention people compared to 2019, you know, at the height.

And the 2024 numbers, you know, were mixed compared to 2019.

You know, they were mostly up and down throughout the year,

but there were more than half of the months

this year that they were up. The most recent number that came in was for December. The December

numbers were pretty close to be on par with 2019 numbers in December. And there were other months

again where the monthly numbers were above 2019.

For the most part, though, when you added up, we're still lagging behind 2019 numbers when you talk about Vegas visitors.

And, you know, we still have a catch-up to do.

And Vegas itself is, you know, to me, I think it's a great barometer of business because as people are doing

conventions and things, they tend to go there. It's still the number one place. So we're still

not there to pre-COVID levels yet when it comes to business conferences and such if you

use Vegas as an indicator. But we're pretty close, John. We're pretty close.