LAS VEGAS — The top tourism official in Las Vegas says the city hasn’t priced out regular travelers, even as July visitor counts fell and casinos took in more from gamblers.
Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), said monthly figures can bounce around but argued the destination remains competitive at different price points.
“We’re not happy with the downturn but the city’s taking steps to address that,” Hill told reporters Friday.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s dead to me.
“Top tourism official” - is his name Baghdad Bob?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
Relax, they’re white, it’s Spanish from spain
Even so.
– 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.
Buffet: (I need to diversify with foreign assets)
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
Whites aren’t necessarily excluded, either. Even white males.
White privilege makes up for them becoming a victim. So not really perpetrated.
Uh, I’m not sure an ordeal like what this guy went through is something others are lining up for, privilege or no. He was detained by ICE for two months, so not quite sure where the white privilege came in…
They have, to my great surprise, even been harassing and detaining whites. I think there is typically a political slant to it, however. They can’t have nonracist and/or nonfascist whites coming through.
Some don’t have much of a choice. But yeah, for the volunteers, I agree.
There’s always a choice to travel to another country, especially a fascist one.
Have you heard of family? Yeah, sometimes they need help or are sick in a country that doesn’t provide healthcare and need taking care of.
“Not have a choice” means that no reasonable person could leave their loved ones to rot and die. So they take that risk. It’s “technically” a choice but no one uses that phrase to mean that.
Show some empathy.
Exactly this. People travel back to Russia and Iran and China all the time to take care of family. They don’t want to be in those countries but their family is stuck and they don’t want to see them die slowly, alone.
Family has to visit other family who’ve migrated to other countries all the time. Before now, the US was seen as a country people would very much want to be in, so there’s a lot of people in this situation here now.
There are no alpha humans. Those ICE goons are just angry, brutal racists let off their leashes.
Alpha: Not fully developed, prone the erratic behavior, not fit for the public to interact with…
Sounds accurate to me.
Ah, that kind of alpha! Nice one. Makes sense.
Vegas sucks but it’s hilarious that Trump is literally bankrupting Vegas
Well he prototyped the casino failure “business” model in his younger days. It’s only logical that he’s spreading that acumen around now.
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?
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.
Many people are saying that he’s the bigliest at bankrupting casinos.
trump was laundering money from russia through his CASINOS. i went to Alanta once in the early 2000s and saw his trump tower.
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.
If they can make the average person feel wealthy by giving them free drinks
Alcohol removes inhibitions, so drunk people gamble more. No need to make them feel rich too.
Casino operators literally say it out loud:
“If you wanna get rich, make little people feel like big people… good food cheap, good whiskey cheap, and a good gamble. That’s all there is to it, son.” - Benny Binion
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lasvegas-binion/
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.
