With the Convention Center on pace for 46 trade shows and about 1.2 million attendees this year, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) doesn’t need to convince anyone that the city can host a big meeting.
U.S. News & World Report recently named Las Vegas the top destination for meetings and events.
The LVCVA’s new campaign, “The Vegas Effect,” is aimed at a harder sale. It wants to give meeting planners an argument they can take into a budget review, built on what a Las Vegas event returns rather than what the city offers.
“Everybody knows the scale of Vegas. That wasn’t the intent of the campaign,” said Kate Wik, the LVCVA’s chief marketing officer. “The insight was that Vegas delivers on the outcome better than any other destination. So how do we close that gap and give meeting planners the tools to take a really great site visit and turn it into a clear-cut board decision?”
Building while ahead
The timing reflects a split in the market. Wik said group business has been exceptionally strong in 2026 and is tracking back toward pre-pandemic levels. Leisure visitation has been softer.
Groups book years out, so the business the LVCVA wins now fills hotel rooms and convention halls well into the decade.
“When you’re on top and you’re performing, you don’t coast, especially when there’s uncertainty and some headwinds from an economic point of view,” Wik said. “The outlook for groups is strong, but you have to be layering on business so far in advance.”
The campaign grew out of qualitative research with meeting planners and C-suite decision makers. Both groups described the same pressure: justifying an in-person event to a finance team that is watching every line item.
Wik said companies learned during the pandemic that virtual meetings work for one-way learning, but fall short when the goal is collaboration that moves a business forward.
“Budgets are under scrutiny no matter what industry you’re in,” she said. “Planners are under pressure to answer the question of why. Why am I holding this meeting? Why are we doing an offsite?”
Speaking the language of the boardroom
The LVCVA worked with longtime agency R&R Partners. Wik said the team “went round and round” on concepts before landing on one built around stock-ticker iconography: green arrows up, red arrows down.
“That language is so basic and intuitive for decision makers. They look at it every single day,” she said. “Reframing the benefits of hosting your meeting in Las Vegas into that lexicon made it cut through so quickly. It’s hard to get attention from anybody.”
The copy follows the same logic. Keynotes hit high notes, conversations create connections, and attendees return home with results. The campaign launched in mid-October to coincide with IMEX America, which Las Vegas hosted for the 15th year.
The timing put the message in front of thousands of planners while they were experiencing the city firsthand.
Measuring a long sales cycle
Wik was candid that the real test is still months away. Qualified leads, whether through Cvent or direct outreach to the LVCVA’s sales team, are the primary measure, and the group sales cycle is long. For now, the team is tracking early signals.
“We look at the early indicators, clicks and engagement, first,” she said. “We’re seeing greater click-through from our digital banners and higher engagement once people are on the site. That’s what ultimately drives leads and then conversions.”
Much of that traffic lands on VegasMeansBusiness.com. For the first time, the site now includes a single page aggregating booking incentives from resort partners. Properties have long offered their own deals to fill specific need periods.
The new page lets planners compare them in one place before contacting a hotel or an LVCVA sales representative. For resort operators, that puts their group incentives in front of planners at the earliest stage of the search.
The planner-focused flight will pause in mid-December. A heavier push aimed at C-suite executives starts after the new year and runs through spring. Wik expects the platform to last, with new headlines and video as the team optimizes.
Wik pointed to the Las Vegas Grand Prix, now days away, as the clearest example of her argument. The race turned what had been one of the weakest weekends on the calendar into one of the strongest. Companies now build client events and conferences around it, including Formula 1’s own business summit.
The city itself may be the strongest evidence. Wik said groups that move a meeting to Las Vegas tend to keep coming back. She mentioned a friend in financial services whose four major annual conferences are now all held in the city.
“It’s not just that groups are shifting their business here,” Wik said. “They continue to bring it back, because we’re proving the value of doing business here. As long as we can continue to pay that off, we’ll lean into that messaging.”
