Visitors dropped for a 6th straight month in Las Vegas as head of tourism insists Sin City isn't dead

Meanwhile casinos: "visitors aren't coming so we'll add more fees, charge $20 for a bottle of minbar water and put an extra 0 on the roulette wheel"

My company put us up a company retreat in Vegas.
Hotel rooms were gorgeous. But there was a incredibly sensitive minibar - with I fucking kid you not, $10 bottled water and $15 mini liquors.
I know that because they tried to charge me a $90 minibar fee. Even though I didn't touch it. It was bogus, because half my company was charged these fees.
I didn't pay anything and last I heard, the hotel dropped it all.

We are gambling our lives every day in Chump's America, why should we go to Vegas to do it when we already do it from home?

To deliver a Tesla truck fireworks show.

I knew visitors kept dropping but this is the first time I've heard Casinos are taking in more from gamblers. That sounds like the nail in the coffin right there, only people with lots of money are going to Vegas.

Americans can barely afford to live with constantly increasing prices, and foreigners get illegally arrested and deported. Who's left to visit Vegas, except maybe Leisure Suit Larry?

i used to follow some asian ytubers that bought into the nevadas no-tax income and moved there, it was hilarious how they thought all the same thing in LA; culture, doctors, schools were not the same quality as in LV or nevada. and they would constantly bitch about cali, while thier base of operations is sitll in LA, because the rest of the "members" refused to moved to nevada.
Ironically I was there in mid August and there were lots of hispanic tourists, then some french. So many people from mexico that there were tijano bands on every street corner near the bellagio.

It’s dead to me.

I've been to las Vegas twice now, both times to visit friends there, and both times I went to the strip and yo some restaurants and both times were godawful. It is such a horrid place that shouldn't even exist in the first place, and I have no idea what any tourist would like there apart from semi legal prostitution.

It's a soul sucking place and if it were to die, I think that would be best for everyone, just leave that place.

Vegas sucks but it’s hilarious that Trump is literally bankrupting Vegas

Oh wow, I highly doubt anyone can bankrupt a bunch of casinos.
What sort of imbecile could do that! It's pretty much impossible to bankrupt one casino let alone a bunch of them.
Next you'll be telling me a reality TV 'star' who was best mates with a convicted human trafficking child rapist, who has been taking money from Russia for decades, will be president. Pfft, no population would ever vote that type of person in...TWICE.
- trump was laundering money from russia through his CASINOS. i went to Alanta once in the early 2000s and saw his trump tower.
- Many people are saying that he's the bigliest at bankrupting casinos.
hes actually the final nail in the coffin, there were 3. the first one is vegas greed trying to cater to only rich people pricing "poorer" people out, 2nd is covid, and they are trying to stem the tide with building sports team facilities, hopefully to lure tourists back, and lastly trump has futhured reduced tourism.
but vegas was going to DIe anyways without trump, trump just accelerated it.
- People with money can go to a lot of nicer places than Vegas (lie, say, just about anywhere else). Why go there? To see Wayne Newton?
Well he prototyped the casino failure "business" model in his younger days. It's only logical that he's spreading that acumen around now.

I could either buy dinner for $25 for basic restaurant food.

Instead, I chose to spend $20 to ride 1.2 miles (because it would have taken an hour walking across the highway) to get to In-and-Out.

As a Canadian there isn't a chance in hell I'm crossing into the USA. It is far too dangerous for a number of reasons. I could end up in a MAGA death camp, detained for weeks (months?) or just randomly shot by their crazy gun-fucking citizens. I don't know why anyone would go there.

Our household is also boycotting all US made products so it wouldn't make sense to spend money directly in the US.

That's definitely part of it. International visitors have collapsed and the consequences are felt by places like Vegas. But Vegas is fucking over domestic visitors too so it gets hit twice. The value proposition has completely disappeared.

People will make their own anecdotal gripes about Vegas, but the real reason is the Trump administration’s insane border and trade policies driving away international visitors as they fear getting arbitrarily detained or they actively boycott the US.

Not to mention targeting a lot of the help… no idea why attendance would drop.
- Not to mention that people can't afford anything because tariffs.
vegas has actually been dying for quite some time, and way before trump, trump and covid just accelerated everything. vegas was expensive even before the pandemic.
- Annual visitation took a dip during Covid and afterwards but largely recovered as recently as 2024. Pre-Covid visitation was roughly 42+ million/ year. In 2024, there were 41+ million visitors. I think it’s true that prices have gone up, but haven’t seen any data. I’m not convinced that the expense is the driver of this trend though… possibly a brewing recession, but the biggest difference from last year is US policy.
This is it. My brother lives in Vegas and I've visited plenty of times and spent time walking the strip in the last couple months.
Way less people from other countries these days compared to last year. You can hear it when walking around town, now it's just English and Spanish.
- Spanish? Which ones?
  — ICE
Definitely. I have international friends, we used to meet up in Vegas periodically because it was cheap/easy for me and somewhere they could go to do all the shopping, eating, etc. they wanted.
They aren't doing that right now. And I don't blame them.
- people might as well go to disney at this point lol.
I mean the guys already managed to bankrupt a casino in the past, so he’s just added the challenge of trying to bankrupt the whole consortium now!
- Back in 2015, Warren Buffett was being interviewed by CNBC about the possibility of a Donald Trump win.
  He kind of laughed at that notion, and the interviewer said "Why are you laughing? He's a businessman like you"
  Warren Buffett goes: "Every business he's ever had, he's run into the ground"
  Then the reporter says: "Well, he's currently leading the polls and slated to win"
  I remember Buffett just kind of leaning back in silence, realizing what he said, understanding that the business Donald Trump "would be running" was the United States.

I can’t fucking afford to live in my own hometown, how the fuck can I afford visiting there?

And it got more expensive to visit, flights are more expensive, I was supposed to have that high speed rail by now but thats not coming anytime soon if ever lol, the drive is a chore no matter what and im within reasonable driving distance (6 hours) It's so mindless and without stops for long gaps. Then you get there and anything fun (for me, I like edm) costs more money to get in, and drinks are way overpriced. I've had friends get their car stolen, jumped walking around while seperated for 5 minutes, etc.
It's just never that good a time, a few friends like gambling, I don't so that effects it forsure lol, I thought it'd be more entertaining and budget friendly for general entertainment.
Maybe you could afford to visit if you gambled away your life savings until you struck it big.
Have you considered debt?

Saw a YouTube video. A can of beer taken in the casino minimarket was not priced on the shelf and rang at $20, with a $4 mandatory automatic tip to the cashier because he opened the can.

What's this, a "we have Dubai at home" kind of scam?

Oh yeah, I'm willing to bet (lol) Vegas now looks to Dubai with envy, and tries to attract the same quality clientele (and slave labor!)
All the glitzy stuff is for the ultra-wealthy, family destinations are replaced with nightclubs, and everyone else gets to work for insulting wages to serve the foreign moneyed class.
Honestly it's a shame the Strip feeds the rest of the city, because outside of that soulless, wretched hive of scum and villainy...the town is pretty alright, all things considered...
- the same quality clientele
  Scum with money? That quality?
- dubai/SA, the UAE trying to stave off thier eventually dying economy(which oil/gas) extraction by invesitng in sports teams.
- I didn't even know Vegas had family destinations. TV and movies made me think it's only for young people on roadtrips and the wealthy.
- Don't you worry, the slave labour part is absolutely on the docket and this administration is working hard on making you work hard for them just so you can live in a leaky shack with 1 serving of gruel per day as payment. You can thank him later.

No shit, capitalism is out pricing tourism. What do you greedy fucks thought would happen when you create a funnel system for you?

It's not just that. Foreign tourists don't want to risk being detained at a US airport just so some ICE alphamale goon can meet his quota.
- Anybody not white and goes to USA today should win a darwin award
- There are no alpha humans. Those ICE goons are just angry, brutal racists let off their leashes.

Vegas is so cooked.

Another thing harming tourism is the heat for sure. Very regularly over 110f in the summer and there is no shade at all on the strip. The actual concrete temp is easily hitting 120f.

Not to mention the city actually smells OF (not like) human shit. The sewers were never built to handle this many people and it's not a problem anyone is willing to address or acknowledge.

i heard most of the hotels is stuck in the 90s, so im not surprised. CSI glorified the hell out LV.

Boycott everything in America. I say this as an American. It doesn’t get better for anyone here until it gets better for everyone out there. And the powers that be, need to come to terms with the fact that this is the way it’s going to be.

MAGAs unironically call Trump the God-Emporer, as in the God-Emporer of the Imperium of Mankind, but they ironically got instead the God-Emporer Leto II and sentenced us to the Golden Path - tyrannical aceticism, but also conditioning for a society.
Do we make it through a more resilient society, or do we get stuck in abject inequity for the foreseeable future.

It's amazing how many foreign tourists come through Vegas. Sucks to be the casinos lol

apparently 20% were international pre-covid. vegas is trying to chase after the dwindling Whales.

Vegas used to be a pretty cheap destination for a vacation that saw a ton of profit from the sheer amount of people that funneled there.

It used to be that you would sometimes get buffet and drinks comped if you spent enough time gambling, and that incentive would keep you in that casino continuing to gamble instead of going to a different place. The cost of a buffet meal and a couple highballs was a small price to pay to keep someone at the tables for another couple hours.

Now(within the last 15 years), Vegas is leaning away from being the worldwide gambling destination and leaning more into fine dining and live shows. This has changed the entire economy there and everything is crazy expensive if you're anywhere near the strip.

This is all to say nothing about the drop in tourism in general because you might just get assaulted when you enter the country by some twat from ICE if your skin is darker than a hotel towel.

vegas has been declining for the better part of the decade, covid+ tariffs/trump is just the final symptom before vegas completely fails. vegas think it can save itself by putting all the "sports' stadiums in the city. they kinda knew thier industry is dying.
Vegas never interested me but I have friends who have talked about that shift. Even going somewhere other than a casino, food and entertainment used to be a bargain compared to other vacation destinations, including restaurants that were started by well known chefs. Now everything is at a premium, even more so than other places.
- The cheap food and entertainment serves a purpose though. The underlying game Vegas plays with your psychology is to try to make you feel rich. If they can make the average person feel wealthy by giving them free drinks or letting them stay in a nice room, then they are more likely to spend big in the casino. All the marketing is designed around this too. Keep this in mind if you ever end up in Vegas. I was never really into Vegas myself until I went and learned the history. I can see the charm of it, I just don’t get carried away.
- apparently you are paying luxury prices, for basic cheap food.
Yup, the casino used to subsidize a lot of things. In all honesty you can still get free drinks but the threshold had climbed to where 20 bucks in the slots got you drinks to I don't even know what now.
There are regulars who gets comped rooms, but it's all based how much you gamble every year. So not a bargain.
The concept of rich fucks subsidizing non-rich like me was definitely a dying culture and now it sounds like this is completely dead. So yeah no way I'm paying full prices at Vegas - getting a good deal was the only point of travelling all the way to the middle of nowhere.

Vegas never really recovered properly from covid, but the current economic situation and the political climate aren’t helping either.

Vegas prices went through the roof post-covid, since people had extra money and were spend-happy. This caused price increases across the board, but it also drew the wrong people to Vegas, increasing crime and other problems.

And with the economy being what it is now, people aren’t willing to spend that much in Vegas. And international tourists are actively avoiding the US. Pre-pandemic, 20 percent of Vegas tourism was international tourists.

Vegas needs to cut prices so deeply that international tourists go ‘fuck it, we’ll go anyway’.

i somehow think vegas wont, because they are investing in building sports facilities hopefully to bring in those transient tourists back.
Vegas deserves to crash and burn. It shouldn't exist.
- Last time I was there, I swore that if I ever returned, I'd be driving a tank or a bulldozer.
Vegas thrives in two economic climates, when things are good, and when things are bad. In the middle gambling usually slows and Vagas is boring. When the trend pushes people to have a lot, they'll gamble a lot because they can afford to lose. When the trend pushes people to have little, they'll gamble away what little they have at the chance of a big payday. When things are sliding up and down that's when people are more conservative with their money and rates of gambling decline. Not quite so broke they're desperate, but not so flush with cash they're reckless. Right now we're kind of in a declining economic climate, but it hasn't hit the bottom yet and generally people are uncertain if it will.
Plus it doesn't help that tourists going to Vegas can be abducted and shipped away to a prison half way across the world before anyone at home would even notice.
- gambling is so common everywhere else, and poeople dont need to go to vegas anymore, they can just do it on thier phones.

"Top tourism official" - is his name Baghdad Bob?

The city is propped up largely by business conventions, at this point. Businesses don't mind swallowing stupidly high costs, especially for sales+marketing teams who always get blank checks, which artificially inflates the price of visiting for absolutely all other audiences. So, nobody else is going.

I've heard that musicians hate performing in Vegas now because so much of the audience are not real fans - but instead business travelers with comp tickets. Dead audiences who don't care.

Unfortunately, I had my first trip to Vegas last year for work. And again in June. And now again in September. Because I'm there for work with work engagements, I don't get to explore the more interesting things outside the city and strip. And having no interest in gambling, stupid-level drinking, loud noisy music, or flashy shit everywhere, I've come to really hate going there.

arnt they trying to gear towards building a ton of sports team centers to stave off the downfall even more.
If it makes you feel any better, the only thing outside of the city and strip is poverty and sorrow. You're not missing anything.
- If you get out of the city, Red Rocks State Park and Hoover dam are worth seeing.

I just went to Vegas for the first time earlier this month. I went for some work related conventions. Everything was expensive as fuck! A modelo was $9. Every time I doordashed a meal it ended up being like $60. Uber was expensive. One of the drivers was moving back to CA the next day because of how high the cost of living had gotten. At least the flights are cheap, right? I also flew Spirit for the first time, and fuck that airline. Never again. If you book with them, plan on a 1-6 hour delay on each end.

vegas is a poor choice to live, even early in the pandemic or before it. i was watching some asian ytubers(used to follow)once moving there,they were the type to rail on california. i laugh because they were so ignorant and dint realize vegas doesnt really have a culture for pocs or an economy to sustain some like your "bougie lifestyle". they drunk the koolaid of the fantasy of places like hawaii and vegas.
Next time you have to be in southern Nevada you'd be better off renting a car and staying in Boulder or one of the other satellite cities. Sincerely someone from San Bernardino.
- I was there for conferences, so it really made sense for me to stay close to them. I can't imagine going to Vegas under any other circumstances.
I've only had good experiences with spirit and frontier. The existence of discount airlines decreases what the others can charge.

I’m going in a few weeks for a renewable energy conference. I’ll see what’s up. They wanted $1100 for two nights at the Cesar. Hilarious.

There's already "Baghdad Bob" so perhaps we can call this guy "Vegas Vince". Everything is under control!

head of tourism insists Sin City isn't dead

It may not be dead, but it does smell kinda like it.

Vegas used to be cheap. Sure doesn't feel that way anymore.

I've heard that Reno basically markets itself as a cheap Las Vegas. How do they compare?
- It’s just sad. Like diaper-at-the-slot-machine sad.
- Hardly. Only been to Reno once and some parts were cool but it is definitely not a cheap Vegas unless all you care about is trashy gambling

Vegas used to be cheap. Sure doesn't feel that way anymore.