Travelers to Las Vegas and to Atlantic City

Abstract

This article measures the impacts of demographic, lifestyle, and distance variables on travel to Las Vegas and to Atlantic-Cape May, New Jersey, using data at two levels of aggregation and at the household level. The source of the travel data is the 1995 American Travel Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The most consistent finding is the strong negative effect of distance for both destinations. The lifestyle variables examined here have little effect on travel to Las Vegas, but they indicate that travelers to Atlantic-Cape May come from areas with high proportions of casino gamblers and low proportions of people who travel regularly. The estimated effects of demographic variables vary with the destination and the level of aggregation. Results of this kind can be useful in destination marketing.