With convention attendance up 1.8% in 2025, while overall tourism is down 6.5%, the Las Vegas Convention Center on Tuesday showcased its years-long renovation and expansion project. It’s expected to lead to 2026 being the greatest year in the city’s history for convention attendance.
Work on the million-square-foot Central Hall at the Convention Center will be completed in December. Together with the renovations of the North and South halls that started in 2023, the project costs $600 million. It follows in the footsteps of the $1 billion West Hall that debuted in 2021.
In April, the LVCVA said Las Vegas as a whole had 563,600 in convention attendance, a 13.9% increase. For the year, the 2.35 million convention visitors are an increase from 2.3 million through the first four months a year ago. The city hosted six million convention visitors in 2024, which contributed $16 billion to the local economy.
Conventions make up about one-sixth of overall visitation and provide a foundation for the city to build on, according to LVCVA CEO Steve Hill.
The average visitor to Las Vegas spends about $1,200 per trip, while the average convention visitor spends about $1,600. That doesn’t include what’s spent on them by their companies, Hill said. That covers the shows themselves and events around the shows, such as dinners and parties.
“It’s a doubly important customer, because most of those folks coming here to attend a meeting are doing so in the middle of the week,” Hill said. “If we didn’t have the strength of the meeting industry, Las Vegas couldn’t look like it does. You have to fill rooms at 85% during the week in order to build properties that cost $2 million a room to build. If you have 65% occupancy, you’d have to diminish the quality and speculator nature of who we are.”
In 2024, the Las Vegas Convention Center hosted 47 conventions with 1.1 million attendees, supplementing what the city’s hotels do with their convention centers. It’s home to CES and other shows that bring tens of thousands of guests to fill 151,000 hotel rooms Sunday through Thursday when tourism visitation wanes.
The latest renovations to the Central Hall are part of an effort to extend the contemporary design, architecture, and customer experience to match the West Hall. The Convention Center opened in 1959 and hadn’t had a thorough renovation in that 65-year-span.
The LVCVA gave the media a hard-hat tour of the Central Hall Tuesday, and Hill described how it will bring in more events and attendance. A customer once said Las Vegas will finally have an “A-plus facility in A-plus city,” he noted.
Hill said Las Vegas is a draw and elevates the meeting industry like no other city, thanks to its amenities. But to hold events in a facility they’re excited to be in helps conventions save money, be more efficient, and grow their shows. “They’ve been waiting for 20 years and we’re thrilled to be on the cusp of it.”
A 65-year-old building that’s used constantly always needs some work, Hill said. The project has been in the planning stages for more than 20 years, but the Great Recession and COVID delayed the process.
When the renovation is completed, the Convention Center will go from 1.9 million square feet of leasable space to 2.5 million square feet, a 30% increase. “We want to have at least a 30% increase in the economic impact and job creation that come with having these shows.”
The Convention Center has supported 70,000 jobs in Las Vegas, contributing $3.9 billion in wagers, Hill said.
“The meeting industry matters so much for Las Vegas. We employ about 300,000 people directly in the hospitality industry and the meeting part of that employment is about one-quarter.”
As for why convention attendance is up 1.8% for the year, Hill told CDC Gaming that the schedule has been strong and that strength will ramp up as they move into 2026. “We think 2026 has a chance to be the best group meeting and trade show year in the history of Las Vegas.”
The Convention Center signed 16 new shows in 2024 and in 2026, it’s bringing a solar-industry show that will attract 40,000 attendees.
“Our goal is to go from prior to this renovation of 1.4 to 1.45 million attendees at the Convention Center to 1.9 million,” Hill said. “We need to add that 450,000 and we’re well on our way.”
