What Happens In Las Vegas Is That I Told You So

by Vegas Taxi Driver
May 13, 2009
The Las Vegas Taxi Driver Blog

My reason for writing in this article is for no reason other than to say, "I told you so" and "its about time".

Watching CNBC at 3:30 AM today, I heard that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority announced that they are going to revive the ad slogan "What happens in Las Vegas...", which was catchy, effective, and successful. Two years ago, on May 14, 2007, I wrote an article entitled "$890 Million Waste at Las Vegas Convention Center Planned By Las Vegas Convention And Visitors Authority". Today, two years later, the Las Vegas Review Journal has an article by Benjamin Stillman about the current plans of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority saying that "The authority will save $23 million in the upcoming year as a result of a decision to suspend work on a proposed $890 million renovation of the Las Vegas Convention Center". In that same blog article I wrote "The 'What stays...' slogan and ad campaign was one of the most successful advertising campaigns of all time. Why isn't the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority spending the proposed $890 million on something like that?"

Two years ago I also wrote a blog article on February 26, 2007 entitled "Las Vegas Monorail to Airport - Big Waste Wont Work" where I asked:

"How long will it take to load all those people with their luggage? How long will it take for all those people to unload with their luggage? And where does the monorail take these people with their luggage? Will they have to haul their luggage hundreds of yards through a busy casino to get to the hotel registration? Will other passengers be annoyed and stop using the monorail because they have to wait for all these luggage-hauling passengers?"

and in that article I stated:

"The monorail goes to and from the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the cab lines full of passengers going to and from the Las Vegas Convention Center are still as long as ever. So, what makes anyone believe that it will work any better at the airport, where everybody has lots of luggage?"

In a May 8, 2009 Las Vegas Sun article by Richard Velotta, where he interviews Clark County Aviation Director Randall Walker about additions to McCarran, Walker said that plans to extend the Monorail "But if all (the monorail company does) is expand what it has to the airport, I honestly don’t think that’s going to create a successful system because the stops that it has today really only provide convenience for a very small percentage of our customers".

Since I started blogging in 2005, I have only written 36 blog articles regarding Las Vegas, most of them about the politics regarding the taxi industry in Las Vegas, and I only wrote them as a way to vent my frustrations and rant about the fact that Las Vegas taxi drivers were experiencing less income during a time when everybody else in Las Vegas was experiencing record revenues and profits because of the poor policies of government regulators. Most of my blogging has been on other websites and unrelated to the taxi business and Las Vegas, and I constantly tell myself that I am not going to say another word about Las Vegas or taxi driving, because I would like to move on to other things. But then I see news like today and I cannot help being interested, because no matter how much I want to focus on other things that I am interested in, I have been in the unfortunate situation of having to use taxi driving in Las Vegas as a way to bridge the gap from where I am and where I want to be.

People are obsessed with Las Vegas and taxi drivers. I would never have guessed how popular these topics and keywords are on Google, and how much traffic I have gotten from writing a few lousy blog articles which are more rants than anything. But there is a big audience for these topics. Six weeks ago I decided to check out the Twitter website, because every time I turn on TV news or sports or anything, everybody is talking about Twitter. I set up a few Twitter accounts to see what it is all about, and while I was at it I set up twitter.com/vegastaxidriver, just so that nobody else would grab that user name. I followed some twitterers, just to see if I could get some of them to follow me, and then I forgot about it. Meanwhile, I used basic Internet marketing tactics to get followers to a handful of marketing related Twitter accounts, including a couple of my Twitter accounts that now have over 10,000 followers each, and are now in the top 2000 Twitter accounts in the world, in terms of the number of followers they have, according to twittercounter.com. Then, just for kicks, I decided to go back to my twitter.com/vegastaxidriver account and post comments about what other people are twittering, by looking at Twitter posts about "las vegas" and "taxi drivers" on search.twitter.com, and just retweeting posts from other tweeters and making comments about their tweets. Twitter.com/vegastaxidriver went from 4000 followers to 6300 followers during the past seven days just by doing that. It is totally amazing to me that anything I put online about Las Vegas and/or taxi driving gets so much attention. As much as I want to do things online that have nothing to do with Las Vegas or taxi driving, I guess it is time for me to do some work on my VegasTaxiDriver.com blog and website, since that is what people are interested in.

by Vegas Taxi Driver
May 13, 2009
The Las Vegas Taxi Driver Blog

"Vegas Tries Luck With Old Slogan"
May 13, 2009
WALL STREET JOURNAL
By TAMARA AUDI
...After a year of flirting with tourism pitches that directly addressed the recession, the entertainment mecca is resurrecting its successful "What Happens Here Stays Here" campaign, which started in 2003...read_article

"Vegas Feeling ‘Blue’ During Tourism Week"
May 12, 2009
FOX 5 NEWS
...To mark the start of National Travel and Tourism Week, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is taking the city’s famous showgirls on a whirlwind trip to five major cities and relaunching the classic “What Happens In Vegas…” ad campaign...read_article

"TOUGH TIMES FOR TOURISM: LVCVA forced to cut budget"
May 13, 2009
Las VEGAS REVIEW JOURNAL
By BENJAMIN SPILLMAN 
...The authority will save $23 million in the upcoming year as a result of a decision to suspend work on a proposed $890 million renovation of the Las Vegas Convention Center....read_article

"Tourism workers rally to encourage travelers"
May 12, 2009
LAS VEGAS SUN / The Associated Press
...Travel to Las Vegas was down 8.7 percent for the first three months of 2009 compared with 2008, even as hotels slashed room rates more than 25 percent, according to the latest figures from the visitors authority. The decline is even more pronounced during weekdays, when conventions and corporate meetings are typically held...read_article

"Q&A: Randall Walker, Clark County aviation director"
May 8, 2009
LAS VEGAS SUN
By Richard N. Velotta
..."But if all (the monorail company does) is expand what it has to the airport, I honestly don’t think that’s going to create a successful system because the stops that it has today really only provide convenience for a very small percentage of our customers"...read_article

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