Las Vegas Monorail lack of success based on complete misunderstanding of transit marketing

New York Times image.

The New York Times reports, in "Business Declines, and Stakes Rise," that:

When it made its debut in 2004, the sleek $650 million train was to be the envy of the nation: a high-tech public transit system, paid for without taxpayer money, that would be so popular it could turn a profit.

But two and a half years later, ridership numbers for the Disney-inspired system, which stops at nine hotel-casinos and the Las Vegas Convention Center, are falling amid a lackluster marketing campaign, technical problems and revenues so far below projections that Wall Street fears that a default on its bonds could occur by the end of the decade.

The Las Vegas Monorail Company’s proposed cure — a privately financed $500 million four-mile extension to McCarran International Airport by 2011 — is seen by many as a risky move. In December, the Clark County Commission granted preliminary approval for such an extension, but observers question how the company can finance it given that two major bond-analyst firms, Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service, dropped the monorail’s bond rating last year to highly speculative, or “junk,” status.
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This shouldn't be a surprise. It's a complete misunderstanding of transit marketing. (1) marketing transit to itinerants is expensive and you have to do it to a new group of people every 2-3 days. DC has the same problem with the DC Circulator. (2) day-in, day-out customers are the bread and butter of transit systems, i.e., commuters.

Lots of tourists use transit systems in NYC, London, and Paris, and to some extent DC, but it's based on the existence of transit in those cities for a long time (DC is a piker compared to the other cities).

Plus, I can't imagine once people are in LV that they move around very much. The whole point of casino marketing is to keep people in place on the property by providing tons of things to do, so that they don't leave and spend money elsewhere in Las Vegas. (It's the same thing that Wal Mart tries to do.)

The LV system has a market development problem of major proportions. Fortunately, the DC Circulator has plenty of opportunities, the ability to market at WMATA stations, and the ability to do guerilla marketing campaigns within the office buildings on the route, plus to the student populations at GWU and Georgetown, plus residents.