According to a recent survey, six in seven visitors had been to Las Vegas before. Four out of five gambled while in Vegas with an average gaming budget of $820 and 64% of visitors earn $100,000 a year or more compared to 48% in 2023. The Las Vegas Visitor Profile is done annually by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA); with it, the tourism agency attempts to gain an understanding of the people who come to Las Vegas, how long they stay, what they do, and how much they spend.
The results help the LVCVA in its marketing campaigns and assists the casinos in their efforts to attract customers. That is the agency’s mission, and it is primary funded by room taxes. The room tax generated $383.9 million in 2024, as compared to $7.9 million in 1975, the first year of the Visitor Profile. But of course, there are more rooms. In 1975, Las Vegas had 35,00 rooms and a, ,79% occupancy rate; in 2024, there were 150,000 rooms with an average occupancy of 83%. Gaming revenue has followed the same trajectory, from $770 million in 1975 to $13.5 billion in 2024.
It is an uncommon success story. Las Vegas is an intellectual construct. Vegas was founded 120 years ago as a railway junction. Named The Meadows by a Spanish explorer, Las Vegas might never have become much more than a small town in the middle of the desert. Instead, the Nevada legislature legalized casino gambling in 1931, construction began on Hoover Dam, and Hollywood and the mob discovered the town. The famous Sin City has been on an upward spiral since the end of World War II, today with over 2 million inhabitants.
Gambling created the city’s identity, although in today’s resorts, conventions, entertainment, retail, and restaurants round out the picture of what used to be called a casino. Led by the evolution of casino-resorts in Las Vegas, the casino as simply a gambling place has followed the dodo into extinction — except of course in remote rural locations. Today, casinos everywhere attempt to emulate the glittering shimmering megaresorts on the Strip.
The evolution is continuous, with new celebrity-chef-driven cuisine, unique amenities, pool parties, day and nightclubs, big-time big-name sports, the biggest stars in the entertainment world, and ever-new resorts pushing creatively at the edges of imagination. Last year, Las Vegas hosted a Formula One race and the Super Bowl. It has a Stanley Cup to its credit and hopes for a World Series one day. However, there are a couple of potential chinks in the armor.
The former Okland A’s of Major League Baseball are moving to town in three years. The team and the city are excited and anticipate great things. The team is expected to draw 9,000 out-of-towners to home games. The baseball tourists may not be the kind of visitor the LVCA has spent 50 years documenting. The Profile might be quite different; for example, it is unlikely that they will have incomes over $100,000 or a gaming budget in excess of $800. The Las Vegas Review-Journal in a recent story about the As wondered if the city might be getting too pricey for the market it catered to just five or 10 years ago.
Another Review-Journal article asked that question in another way in January. Written by long-time business reporter Richard Velotta, it discussed a rumored sale of Circus Circus. The property located on 102 acres could fetch as much as $5 billion; any new property on the site or significant change to Circus Circus would certainly run into the billions of dollars. With that kind of a price, the old Circus model of cheap rooms, food, and entertainment would not pay the bills. Again, the RJ wondered if Vegas was pricing itself out of a significant percentage of the market.
In a way, it is the story of inflation. During every period of inflation, analysts wonder which businesses will not survive; a spiral of ever-increasing prices is not sustainable by any business. In theory, that statement is true of Las Vegas as well. Another example from the survey: Spending on retail was up 13 percent to $281 and more ominously, in 2024, visitors to Las Vegas spent $159 on transportation.
Since Steve Wynn opened the Mirage in 1989, casino-resort operators have been striving for a more affluent customer. The objective has been to design rooms, restaurants, and entertainment the appeals to the well-to-do, beyond the budget of the masses that fill Circus Circus. The strategy has worked to an amazing degree. Visitors with an annual income over $100,00 have reached 64 percent of the total as compared to just 28 percent in 2019.
And finally, 41.6 million people visited Las Vegas last year, slightly more than in 2023, but less than 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. It is only a million visitors less than those years, but it does indicate that the growth of visitation that has characterized the growth of Las Vegas, gaming, and resort development since 1950, has peaked.
No doom and gloom here, but a cautionary note. There is a limit to the size of any market in any industry or country. With significant competition coming from nearly every state in the union, Asia, and the Middle East, Las Vegas may be nearing the outer edges of its potential market. At the same time, the city may be limiting its market with the constant increase in the cost of everything.
