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 can’t fucking afford to live in my own hometown, how the fuck can I afford visiting there?
Maybe you could afford to visit if you gambled away your life savings until you struck it big.
Have you considered debt?
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.
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
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.
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…
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.
Many people are saying that he’s the bigliest at bankrupting casinos.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
There’s already “Baghdad Bob” so perhaps we can call this guy “Vegas Vince”. Everything is under control!
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.
I’ve only had good experiences with spirit and frontier. The existence of discount airlines decreases what the others can charge.
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.
Fair enough, it was moreso general advice for anyone who can act on it.
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.
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.
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?
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’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.
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.
head of tourism insists Sin City isn’t dead
It may not be dead, but it does smell kinda like it.
