Gambling revenue is up nearly ten percent above last year in Atlantic City. State casino regulators say gaming netted more than $230 million in 2015. It comes as good news for a city hammered by casino collapses and competition from other states. But the numbers for non-gaming revenue may be even more important as an indicator of Atlantic City’s stability. Stockton University’s Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming, Hospitality and Tourism has been measuring everything from taxes to hotel occupancy to parking spaces. Joining Mary Alice Williams in the NJTV Agnes Varis Studio is the Institute’s Professor Brian Tyrrell
Parking fees per space went up this spring compared to last year. Tyrrell says that’s affected tourism for Atlantic City because, “what we’re finding is that with the reduction with the total supply of casinos that the remaining properties are doing better compared to how they were doing last year. And that’s in large part, not necessarily across the board, but we’re seeing double digit increases in per supply figures, and that means that there’s at least the real potential for a lot of these properties to do well, do better than they’ve done before, and in fact they are.”
Despite rates going up for parking spaces and lodging fees for available casino rooms, Tyrrell says the casino market is right sizing in Atlantic City because of the closure of other casinos. “The right sizing occurred with the closures. Perhaps the right thing to do, the per property performance for a lot of these properties are going up. And overall, on a per supply basis, we’re seeing better performance out of them. That’s good news for the properties that remain because it means that they’re generating more revenue than they have in the past,” he said.
The report chooses to analyze three taxes, Atlantic City’s Casino Parking Fee, Atlantic County’s Lodging Fee and Atlantic City’s Luxury Tax, as a way to track Atlantic City’s tourism indicators. He says the reasoning behind doing that was to use tax revenues that were verifiable, particularly by the media, that were able to be tracked. He says it was important to make it very transparent as to what the report was trying to do in judging performance on objective measures made available to the public.
To account for the casino closings in Atlantic City they changed their analytics to use data on a per supply basis. “We had previously been tracking just the total revenue, and of course that’s going to be down because you’ve lose a quarter of the supply of hotel rooms and parking spaces. So what we did, we started looking the figures that we were tracking on a per supply basis. That is, how much revenue is being generated per hotel room or per parking space,” he said.
Tyrrell says there is evidence to suggest there is reinvestment in Atlantic City. “We’ve seen resorts recently open up new conference facilities. Harrah’s working on conference facilities. The Borgata announcing that indeed they are going to develop an entertainment venue, and that’s underway,” he said. “When performance increases on a per supply basis, or per property basis, the decision to reinvest becomes easier to do because they believe they’re going to make more money off of it.”