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Las Vegas flight slump follows mass shooting

International flight bookings to Las Vegas slumped 16% in the immediate aftermath of last month’s mass shooting in the US city.

Domestic flight reservations fell 21% in the three weeks after the October 1 massacre.

Domestic air bookings for Las Vegas were already down 7% in the eight weeks prior to the tragedy on the equivalent period the year before, while international bookings were 2% up, according to ForwardKeys, which analyses around 17 million flight booking transactions a day.

In international markets, the most dramatic swing was in bookings from Asia Pacific, which were 10% up prior to the shooting and fell to 10% down after it.

Bookings from the Middle East were already 26% down and they fell to 41% down, benchmarked on the equivalent period in 2016.

Forward bookings for air travel to Las Vegas to April 30, 2018 are behind where they were at this point last year, with international reservations 2% behind year-on-year.

Bookings for Las Vegas have slowed in almost every source market, with the exception of Australia and Brazil, the new data shows.

ForwardKeys chief executive, Olivier Jager, said: “Looking at the current situation, one can only feel sympathy. What has happened to the victims of the shooting is absolutely shocking and tragic.

“One also feels sorry for all those people who work in Las Vegas too, they are dedicated to showing visitors a good time and it must be very hard to keep doing that in such awful circumstances.

“Nevertheless, whilst reservations for the coming six months have fallen back; it is not a certainty that the market will stay down.

“If the US economy picks up; if there are no more similar incidents and if there is a brilliant promotional campaign by Las Vegas, it is possible that the situation can be turned around.”

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