Airport’s Slots Are on a Roll in Vegas

Air travelers are arriving hours early these days and gambling more at McCarran International Airport, where slot machines sit side-by-side with baggage carousels and departure gates.

The result of tightened security after Sept. 11 has been a windfall for the nation’s seventh-largest airport as gambling revenues and some other concessions have taken off.

“It’s hurry up and wait,” said Sandy Ortiz, 56, waiting in Las Vegas for a flight to San Jose and sipping a cup of Starbuck’s coffee. Her husband gave in to a beckoning slot machine.

“That machine, right there,” 59-year-old Adolph Ortiz said with a grin. “It’s saying, ‘Adolph, come here!’ ”

“In San Francisco, San Jose or Denver, we just sit and read,” Sandy Ortiz said.

McCarran’s slots cleared almost a half-million dollars more in October, November and December than in the same three months of 2000.

“People with more time to spare are spending money in our slots and our restaurants and shops,” airport spokeswoman Hilarie Grey said.

In some airports, despite significant drops in passenger numbers, concession sales have remained steady--indicating that after clearing security, passengers are spending more than spare change in their spare time.

“Previously, where people would go out and have a latte, now they’re having lunch,” said Bob Parker, spokesman for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington state. “They’ve got more time.”

McCarran, unique among major U.S. airports in offering slot machines in airport concourses and gate waiting areas, has hit a jackpot of its own.

Even though 1.5 million fewer passengers passed through the Las Vegas airport in the last three months of 2001, compared with the year before, McCarran raked in $8.5 million--$473,618 extra--in slot revenues.

Scott Kichline, airport business manager, said the $41 million the airport reaps annually in slot revenues provides “a nice cash cushion to weather tough times that come along.”

The ka-ching of slots has mixed with boarding calls at McCarran since 1968. It isn’t the only airport in America with slot machines--Reno-Tahoe International has 237--but it is the largest, with 1,308 one-armed bandits.

Popular lore says slot machines at the airport are less likely to pay off big than slots at Las Vegas casinos. But there is never a shortage of players among the 35 million passengers passing through McCarran annually.

“It’s an hour’s entertainment,” said Bernie Rich, 59, a Bloomingdale, Ill., resident who walked away with $4.70 after plunking $10 into a slot machine while waiting for his aunt to arrive.

Rich’s wife, Dolores, and a cousin, Marie Boyd, spent the hour cruising the shops of a pre-security concourse featuring souvenir stores with Las Vegas Strip hotel themes, a newsstand-bookstore, chocolate, clothing, jewelry and coffee shops, and even a cigar stand.

“What we call dwell time, or waiting time, has gone up,” said David Milobsky, an analyst for HMS Host Corp., a Bethesda, Md., company that operates food and beverage concessions at McCarran.

“It’s true there are fewer people flying, but the people who are flying have more time,” he said. “With more time on their hands, that gives them time to eat or shop or what have you.”

HMS Host serves 64 airports in North America and six overseas. Milobsky said concession sales have been inconsistent.

“Some properties have really suffered,” he said. “Some are still way behind from a sales perspective where they were last year. On a national basis, the two things we look at are airline capacity and passenger emplanements. Those two things are still down.”

Phil Orlandella, spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, said that with 23.5% fewer passengers passing through Logan Airport’s gates in December 2001 compared with a year earlier, retail and restaurant business at the Boston airport has suffered.

“People don’t have time to shop,” Orlandella said. “They’re standing in security lines.”

Increased security has been a double-edged sword for Kathy Hussey, general manager at McCarran for Atlanta-based WH Smith Inc.

“Lines sometimes are so long that by the time people get through they have no time to shop,” she said. “Other times, people get here early, expecting long lines.”

But with other airports around the nation suffering from greater declines in passenger traffic and sales, Hussey said her group of 16 newsstands and bookstores vaulted from fourth to the top in sales among 23 airports in North America.

“It does seem like people are reading more--not only books, but also newspapers and news magazines, because they’re trying to keep up with the news,” Hussey said.