Las Vegas hotels hiring hundreds as travel confidence returns

As more people get vaccinated against COVID-19, many are starting to feel safe enough to start traveling again. The Las Vegas Strip is already seeing that demand and hotels are needing to hire more staff, and fast.

This time last year, all hotels were forced to shut down, turning the "city that never sleeps" into a sleepy ghost town. 

"Everything you're seeing around here right now was completely empty," said Randy Goldberg, vice president of talent acquisition strategy at MGM Resorts International. "As the pandemic kicked off, the properties were closed for over three months so it was a good amount of time that we were completely shut down, then as we started to reopen, that was a slow reopening with a lot of safety focus, and still a lot of government restrictions around what our occupancies could be, how many people could be in our casinos."

Las Vegas relies heavily on tourism. Travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders in place meant hundreds of employees were laid off throughout town, taking a toll on the local economy. 

"Well, in February we reached a peak last year (2020) and we fell off a cliff and by April (2020) we'd lost just tons of jobs and visitor volume was down. The hotel occupancy rate hit the floor, gaming revenue hit the floor, we had no more conventions coming to town, it was a disaster," said Stephen Miller, director at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Business and Economic Research.

Now that the vaccine is available, cases are going down and restrictions are being lifted, and that yearning for travel is higher than ever. Already this month almost 20 million people have passed through TSA checkpoints across the country from April 1-14. That same time last year only saw 1.4 million travelers. 

 "What we're experiencing today is obviously a big comeback, that pent-up demand. You can see individual travelers want to be here in Las Vegas," Goldberg said.

Economists say the city has a long way to go. Total visits to Las Vegas in February were still down by 53