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Hotels, casinos, restaurants and bars are set to welcome an influx of business travelers this fall.

The city has emerged as the most popular destination in the U.S. for forward flight bookings, according to one corporate travel agency, amid a steady rise in hotel occupancy.

This week, MGM Resorts International launched its 100-megawatt solar array, the hospitality industry's largest directly sourced renewable electricity project worldwide. The array's clean energy now produces up to 90 percent of MGM Resorts' Las Vegas daytime power needs, spanning 65 million square feet of buildings across 13 properties and more than 36,000 rooms on the Las Vegas Strip — including ARIA, Bellagio, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, The Mirage, New York New York and Park MGM.

The Sands Expo & Convention Center, the 2.25 million-square-foot convention center adjacent to The Venetian, is getting a name change.

The 323,000-panel array located in the desert north of Las Vegas will supply electricity for 36,000 rooms in 13 Strip resorts when it’s activated.

The power-up plan will provide a long stride toward the company’s energy sustainability goals.

To aid in the selection process for the world’s largest events, Northstar Meetings Group has created the meetings industry’s first-and-only Convention Cities Index, a weighted-ranking system that identifies those destinations that are ideally suited for the world’s grandest gatherings. The CCi rankings reveal the top 25 global convention cities, as well as the top 25 U.S. cities.

More than 1,200 event professionals gathered at MPI’s World Education Congress at CAESARS FORUM last week, the largest in-person industry event so far this year. While attendance was about half of pre-pandemic levels, the large showing is another shot in the arm for an industry recovering from essentially a lost year of business.

A rapidly recovering Las Vegas will be the focus of the global tourism industry Monday, when World of Concrete stages the first major trade show in the United States since the COVID pandemic wiped out the lucrative convention and meeting business.

At WEC Vegas, June 15-17 at CAESARS FORUM, MPI is bringing key women leaders from Las Vegas together for a panel discussion called “The Superwomen of Vegas: Rising Up and Empowering Others”.

XpressWest, the subsidiary of Virgin Trains USA planning a high-speed line from California to Las Vegas, has begun talks to extend the western terminus from Victorville to Rancho Cucamonga, where the line could connect directly to the Los Angeles metro network.

Meetings, convention and trade show media heard from Las Vegas leaders of the industry and got their first look at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s $989 million, 1.4 million-square-foot West Hall expansion on Global Meetings Industry Day.

As Covid-19 vaccinations lay the groundwork for recovery, here’s what's happening now in Las Vegas and what's in store for the future.

On Friday, Nev. Gov. Steve Sisolak announced he is further loosening restrictions on large gatherings, including meetings and conventions, entertainment venues and large group gatherings by increasing capacity to 50 percent March 15.

After the recession hit, companies and tourists shunned the country’s largest gambling hub. Now Las Vegas is on a winning streak. MGM Resorts International

Las Vegas, one of the top convention destinations in the world, has been cited as the best example of how a city has used those meetings to make itself a technology-innovation hub. A study has found that medical- and technology-based conventions and meetings ar