A Phoenix Tale - Las Vegas After September 11th

What happened to Las Vegas in September 11^th?

When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers five years ago they made a dreadful sound. In Las Vegas, there was total silence as the airport that supports the gambling capital that bases its entire economy on tourists came to a halt.

When some time has passed and the planes started taking off again many of the tourists left and did not come back.

Around 350,000 fewer visitors came to Las Vegas in September 2001 than the year before, a 14 percent drop. Almost 250 groups canceled meetings or conventions. The sudden lack of traffic caused several casino companies to postpone multimillion-dollar expansion projects and in addition to that, between September and October, the industry laid off about 8,900 employees - five percent of its staff.

September 11^th was a painful reminder of how sensitive the nation's gambling center is to disasters or economic downturns.

Visitors to Vegas, which is usually an upbeat party town dealt with their grief and sorrow in unexpected ways.

On the afternoon of Sept. 11^th, a group of people lit candles and brought flowers to the front of the replica of the Statue of Liberty at the New York-New York casino hotel.

Its replicate skyline of 1940s Manhattan was fronted by a fence and covered in T-shirts with personalized messages, including one from a group from Alabama that said "God Is Still in Control!"

The tourism authority rode on the new wave of patriotism and in order to get visitors back to Las Vegas launched an ad campaign which used Frank Sinatra's song, "It's Time For You". This was done to attract the drive-in portion of the tourism, which accounted for about half of the city's 35 million visitors each year. The campaign's purpose was to inform people that they have the opportunity for a quick vacation within a driving distance, all part of their American civil right.

This campaign was followed with another one that focused on air travel under the slogan: "Freedom to Get Away From It All".

Tourism returned over the next few months. The drive-in traffic had increased and then plane traffic. In early 2003, for the first time since the attack, total airport traffic of 2.8 million passengers exceeded prior-year figures. The airport is now the nation's fifth busiest, posting a record 44.3 million people last year. There are 96 gates instead of 83 in 2001 and 560 daily flights instead of 445.

The present and the future

Today, five years after that terrible day, there aren't many signs of the price that the city paid and of the effect that the events of 9/11 had on the city.

Despite the potential of ruining the city, in the five years that have passed Las Vegas has made a triumphant return to grace. Among the new projects that were built are the convention center at Mandalay Bay and a thousand-room hotel tower at The Venetian . In addition to that $15 billion worth of new casino projects, including Wynn Encore, the Palazzo, Project CityCenter and Echelon Place, will be finished within the next four years.

However, certain security measures, such as trunk searches and deploying bomb-sniffing dogs have been taken in some hotels. A counterterrorism unit has been added to the police force and the total number of police officers has grown by 300 since 2001.

Some of the September 11^th hijackers, including suicide pilot Mohammed Atta, were documented to have visited Las Vegas a few times before the attacks, but no conclusive reason was ever found. It did, however, served to heighten the awareness of security.

Five years after, Las Vegas is bigger and better than ever. It is a sign to the strength of the city and perhaps an example of the futility of terror attacks. Las Vegas turned out to be a city that can not just gamble and take risks but to also eventually win.