Mass shootings and hotel-market outcomes: Evidence from Las Vegas

This paper examines whether a mass shooting altered hotel-market outcomes in a tourism destination. We use the October 1, 2017 Las Vegas shooting as an unexpected shock to perceived visitor safety and estimate its effect using monthly hotel data from 25 large U.S. markets and a synthetic difference-in-differences design. The analysis considers rooms rented, occupancy, average daily room rates, and hotel revenue. Although the baseline estimated effects are negative across all four outcomes, none are statistically significant. Robustness specifications using logged outcomes and year-over-year differences provide some evidence of a decline in hotel revenue. Dynamic estimates indicate a statistically significant decline in rooms rented during the first post-treatment quarter, although this result is sensitive to the treatment of seasonality. These findings illustrate the importance of accounting for seasonality and hotel-market trends when interpreting raw declines following a destination crisis. Hotel-class-specific estimates suggest that adverse effects were concentrated among higher-class hotels.