It is August and in Reno that means Hot August Nights (HAN). Reno’s annual car and music event began August 1 and runs through August 10 this year, the 39th HAN. Up to 6,000 participants with their cars are expected, and as many as 500,000 spectators over the ten days.
In August 1986, Reno was in its heyday as a casino destination. Except for Las Vegas and Atlantic City, Reno casinos had no competition. Six million people a year visited the city, gambled in the casinos, ate in the restaurants, and stayed in the hotels. But summer was always a slow season for the gaming industry in northern Nevada. Casino business peaked in May, then slowed until the end of September, hitting another peak in October. From mid-November through February, the gambling business in Reno slowed again.
The challenge for the city and individual casinos was to find events that brought people to town during the off seasons. Las Vegas faced the same seasonality. Over the years, Vegas developed unique solutions. Celebrity entertainers were big enough to draw tourists in any season and in 1985, Las Vegas discovered the National Finals Rodeo (NFR). Like HAN, the NFR is still a mainstay of the city’s special events. Of course, Las Vegas has grown a great deal since then and has many more venues and events that fill the city’s 150,000 hotel rooms. Reno has always been a horse of a different color and nothing in the north — not the room count, special events, or entertainment — comes up to level of things in the south…