Visits to Atlantic City drop

Visits to the beleaguered Atlantic City land casinos dropped 6.2% last year, adding to the ongoing battle for survival of the gambling centre, but the positive aspect was that spending per visitor increased slightly.

The new numbers come from a Spectrum Gaming Group study which found that 26.6 million people visited Atlantic City casinos last year, a decrease of 6.2%, but that spending per visitor fell by only half that amount, indicating that the people who have stopped coming to the nation's second-largest gambling market are the less-profitable customers.

Atlantic City is in the fifth-straight year of a revenue decline brought on by the explosion of casino gambling in neighbouring states and exacerbated made by the poor national economy.

The Spectrum findings are perhaps a vindication of the region's marketing attempts to attract a bigger spending clientele - the casinos' win-per-visitor was nearly $134 last year, down 3.6% from 2009 and nearly 8% from 2008.

Most visitors (22.9 million) travelled to the centre by private means - usually cars - whilst lower spending groups generally made their gambling pilgrimage by coach, with 3.8 million travelling by this method - a decline of 13%.

"Busing is on a long, slow goodbye," one casino official opined. "Buses once accounted for 15 million people a year here."

Source: InfoPowa News