Las Vegas Convention and Visitor's Beureu

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) segments their target market by household income, geography, family life-cycle, professional organization membership, age, gender, ethnicity, and a segment that must have been difficult to determine, propensity to gamble. The bases discussed in the text include ethnicities of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, ethnicities that are underrepresented in the ethnographic make up of the visitors to Las Vegas. The metro areas of Portland, OR and Atlanta, GA as well as Canadian visitors, were chosen by the availability of low cost plane tickets to Las Vegas and their median household incomes. Life-cycle segments like family vacations, bachelor/ette parties, and professional conventions were targeted with special interest focused at meeting and convention planners. Language segmentation also played a part with the production of Spanish and English television commercials. Targeting the membership to minority chambers of commerce and meeting planning organizations indirectly led to an increase of visitors.

The LVCVA uses a multisegmented strategy to lure visitors to the city of Las Vegas. This works well because the city has something to offer everybody but certain segments are underrepresented. From the old strip on the Boulder Highway for the price conscious to the Downtown hotels for those nostalgic for the Rat Pack's Vegas to the family friendly hotels like Excalibur and Treasure Island , the LVCVA has a multitude of products with a wide appeal and needs to showcase this wide variety to different segments. Not only do individual hotels cater to people with different household incomes, from standard rooms up to presidential suites, but certain hotels cater to a wide spread of household income brackets. Imperial Palace, a Japanese-themed hotel on the Las Vegas strip, has cut-rate rooms from $30/night up to $95/night . Just across the street at the ancient Rome inspired Caesar's Palace, rooms start at $140/night and go up to over $4,000/night . And even more ridiculous than Caesar's $4000/night room is that there are whole departments in the casino hotels devoted to attracting celebrities and "whales", an affectionate term for wealthy visitors with a propensity to gamble . While this nightly rate difference is large, the abundance of nearby motels proves that there is a market for rooms even cheaper than the Imperial Palace's. The LVCVA offered special travel deals to expand the target audience to a lower household income where travel costs were a bigger barrier. While this segment may spend, on average, less than the usual Las Vegas visitor, the sheer number of price-conscious visitors to Sin City make it a segment that can provide a positive return on investment of ad dollars, especially in the current economic climate.

Cannibalization can be an issue for the LVCVA. Las Vegas is continually developing and expanding its attractions and targeting new markets. The abundance of new shows, price points of the hotel rooms, and unconventional activities offered are all intended to draw new segments. In a perfect world, there would be no poaching, only growth. Unfortunately someone is always on the losing end and even though the LVCVA is not affiliated with any hotel or attraction it is still beholden to the hospitality industry. With the major funding of the LVCVA coming from hotel taxes the Authority must pay attention to cannibalization. Older hotel owners and traditional shows will feel the brunt of the cannibalization of visitors with the LVCVA showcasing the dynamic, more exciting hotels and attractions. If these hotel owners were to organize, they could create a political climate hostile to the future funding of the LVCVA.

Lifestyle plays an important segmenting dimension for the LVCVA. The wedding industry is adept at selling the idea of a dream wedding. This includes the ring, cut of diamond, the wedding dress, wedding cake, the reception, and the wedding itself. Las Vegas has tapped into this paradigm by making itself the ultimate place for bachelor/ette parties. As someone on the tail end of a wave of friends'