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.
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.