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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s dead to me.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
“Top tourism official” - is his name Baghdad Bob?
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.
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.
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’.
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.
Vegas deserves to crash and burn. It shouldn’t exist.
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.
So, I wanna stress the emphasis on used to. But it totally did.
Everyone who knows anything about this town claims it was much cooler when the mob ran it. Seriously! They were big on legacy and making cool stuff that wowed people and drew them to all the gambling and stuff. That was the era of free drinks at the slots and comped lobster dinners.
They weren’t dumb hedgies like the current stewards of the realm, they knew crap like, for instance, parking spaces that make more money than 98% of the staff per hour, was simply bad business.
Now, half of it is owned by Amazon and everything is about exponential stockholder returns. Like everything else in this Ayn Randian ultra-capitalist hellscape.
SO, what used to be cool?
There was a ton of really cool exhibits, free shows along the Strip, cheap buffets, and that kinda thing.
One of the oldest casino properties, Circus Circus, still has the Adventure Dome (although it’s sadly a shadow of its former glory days), and New York New York has a pretty fun (if massively overpriced) rollercoaster attached to a large arcade. The casino itself is old with cramped low ceilings and odd smells…
The Flamingo has a gorgeous botanical garden that hosts lots of pretty birds including, yes, flamingos.
The Mirage used to have Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden…with dolphins and tigers and stuff. It’s no longer around and it seemed very nice and ethical when we went, but I can’t remember if it closed after some kind of scandal or something…
Luxor used to have a walk-through Star Trek experience that modeled the set and everything, with actors walking visitors through an exciting short adventure aboard the ship. (I think the Borg were involved!)
…And they had a 3D motion ride tied to the TV show “ReBoot”. (Sadly didn’t get to experience either of these)
They still have that “Bodies” anatomy exhibit and one for the Titanic, which is actually pretty amazing.
“T.I” (barf) used to be “Treasure Island”, because it used to have big galleons parked in a lagoon up front, where you could watch pirates popping off flintlocks and swordfighting and swinging to board the rival ship every couple of hours.
Then they changed that to “Sirens of T.I” which was kinda the same thing, but “sexier” and less family oriented. (Think leather and more butt-cheek with whip cracking.) Sadly, the one time I was around for that, it was cancelled due to weather that could cause safety concerns with the pyro. :(
Now, the ships and water and ramparts and net rigging decor is all gone and it’s some cubular nightclub that has famous DJs sometimes and I can only assume hosts highway robbery at the bar, shady dealings, cocaine benders in the bathrooms, and the occasional hush-hushed drink drugging. You know, stuff for the NEW Vegas clientele.
Let’s see…Tropicana used to have a massive “volcano” go off and belch fire occasionally, that was neat! They got rid of that.
There was a massive candy store, “World’s Largest Coke Bottle” (I think it was an elevator). . .that still around? I dunno but it’s just shopping.
Inside Caesar’s Palace there used to be a GIGANTIC Trojan horse as part of the famouse F.A.O Schwartz (spelling?)Toy Store. It was massively overpriced but also just really really cool to check out anyway. It’s a gigantic H&M since I last saw it. Sans Trojan horse, replaced by weird hanging manaquins clad in shiny tight leather. (Sensing a theme…)
Excalibur is actually pretty rad still. Houses a large arcade and Tournament of Kings is a legit great time. It’s VERY cool. I’m glad it’s still there.
The Bellagio has a really cool art conservatory and their famous fountains, and the Wynn has pretty cool floral displays.
Also, Pinball Hall of Fame moved to a more central and much larger location. That place is GREAT fun with a cup of quarters!
But yeah, now almost everything is catering to night clubs, day clubs (which are basically everything wrong with nightclubs but now with pools and solar radiation), people forced to go to conventions for work, and big ticket shows run by the Ticketmaster / Live-Events-or-something cartels.
To see the current attitude that runs this place now, look no further than the fact they host the F1 here now, and hardly anybody who actually lives and works here has a snowball’s chance in, well, here, to go see it.
Also “The Sphere”, which is a slightly neat novelty eyesore that hosts concerts and crap for like $300 a ticket.
Man…sorry for the super long post, I didn’t think I had this much to say on the topic! LOL
I hope it was interesting though!
That was an incredibly interesting read and thank you for taking the time to write that! It seems like the entire place went from this unique experience to enshittified corporate garbage in the last 20 or so years. I mean, a giant H&M? That’s like the crappiest fast fashion brand in the world. I thought that city was more about luxury…
I wonder how the corporate fuckboys were able to muscle out the mob though. Is it because they had the money to pay the right people for stricter enforcement of the law?
Are you from Vegas? I was wondering what it’s like for locals there. I live in a touristy place of Japan (nowhere near the level of entertainment offered — or used to be offered — by Vegas) and while I appreciate that people from all over are interested in the little island I was born on, I can’t help but to resent how a chunk of it solely caters to outsiders. Everywhere I go now it’s tourist traps. I could move to a different part of the island I guess, but I was here first lol.
I remember learning about it a long time ago and thought it made no sense.
Then I went with a married couple who brought two kids and I still believe it even more. These college friends don’t drink, vape, weed, gamble and are basically non-religuous relugious people so it was a weird experience. We stayed in a casino hotel that allowed all of it, and we ended up only going to museums and dining… In the middle of a desert.
It’ll never be a definitive family destination.
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.
head of tourism insists Sin City isn’t dead
It may not be dead, but it does smell kinda like it.
Vegas sucks but it’s hilarious that Trump is literally bankrupting Vegas
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.
Well he prototyped the casino failure “business” model in his younger days. It’s only logical that he’s spreading that acumen around now.
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.
