Las Vegas sees sharp visitor drop as leisure spending wanes
By: Rajesh Kumar Singh, Dan Fastenberg and Alan Devall (Reuters via MSN)
Trump sacrificed this (fairly large) segment of our services economy to achieve what? Trump has not followed through on a policy pivot to support an industrial economy. Trump has only artificially distorting market signals, hoping to spur productive investments by magic.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
LAS VEGAS, Feb 19 (Reuters) - On Fridays, it still feels like peak Vegas — rolling suitcases, packed rideshare queues and the familiar churn at Harry Reid International. By Monday, the airport has quieted considerably.
"Our peaks are still peaks, and our valleys are softer," said James Chrisley, director of the Clark County Aviation Department.
The softening is showing up in hotel pricing, flight schedules and paychecks — echoing what the Federal Reserve's survey and recent airline earnings calls have flagged: Higher-income travelers keep booking, while households feeling the pinch pull back.
With the top 10% of earners driving consumer spending, economists warn recession risks can rise if affluent, market-linked spending suddenly cools.
Nowhere is that divide clearer than in Las Vegas, a city powered by leisure spending that just posted its sharpest annual visitor decline outside the pandemic.
Las Vegas drew about 3.1 million fewer visitors in 2025, a 7.5% drop — its sharpest decline outside the pandemic since record-keeping began in 1970, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The agency does not break down its visitation figures by domestic versus international travelers.
Passenger traffic in 2025 fell about 6% at Harry Reid, served by carriers like American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Allegiant. December traffic, typically buoyed by holiday travel, fell 10.3%.
Conventions are holding up; the weakness is leisure — the city's lifeblood.
"I think this is more of a microcosm of where the American consumer is than necessarily telling us where the American economy is going," said Andrew Woods, who heads the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada.
Woods said other big vacation spots — like Honolulu, Orlando, Fla. and Disneyland — aren't seeing the same downward trend in visitors as Las Vegas, adding that the city's high prices and fees have made it especially vulnerable as budget-conscious travelers pull back.
Officials and executives also said Las Vegas is coming off two straight record years and is now settling into a more balanced market.
MIDWEEK FADE
The shift is most visible in the middle of the week.
Weekdays are when hotels build steady volume — rooms that cover payrolls and keep restaurants and casino floors moving. When that demand softens, hotels can backfill with promotions, but they usually lower prices or add perks to do it.
From Monday to Thursday, the Las Vegas Strip looks different: Self-parking garages thin out at resorts that overflow on weekends, while valet lanes keep moving. Location data from Placer.ai suggests the Strip has tilted toward weekends.
Officials, analysts, workers and visitors cited a mix of political unease and more cautious travel plans. Fernanda Loiza, a tourist from Guatemala, said some travelers may be staying away because of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, which has ensnared tourists in some high-profile cases. Some people, Loiza said, are afraid of "coming and openly and freely enjoying Las Vegas."
International visitors matter disproportionately because they typically stay longer and spend more.
Tour guide Michael Hillman said travelers are bristling at how pricey Las Vegas has become. "Ten bucks for a bottle of water," he said. "People don't see a deal anymore."
HOTELS DISCOUNT, AIRLINES PULL BACK
MGM Resorts this month said revenue and earnings at its Las Vegas resorts fell in the fourth quarter and in 2025, citing outsized weakness at value-oriented properties such as Luxor and Excalibur, even as executives said trends were improving into 2026.
Caesars Entertainment reported on Tuesday that profit and revenue fell at its Las Vegas segment in the quarter ending in December and in all of 2025. For the full year, profit was down about 20% year-on-year, on roughly a 5% decline in revenue.
Strip hotels have leaned on seasonal offers and dining credits since late 2025, sometimes adding perks to hold demand. CoStar Group data shows midweek revenue per available room fell about 11% in 2025.
"Las Vegas remains a predominantly leisure-driven hotel market," said Michael Stathokostopoulos, a senior market analyst at CoStar. Inflation and economic uncertainty, he said, are pushing travelers to skip trips, shorten stays or trade down.
Airlines have trimmed schedules as demand has softened. Cirium data shows U.S. carriers have about 7% fewer seats scheduled into Las Vegas for the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier.
International traffic shows a similar trend, particularly from Canada, a key overseas market. Major Canadian carriers have cut capacity for the quarter by about 30%. The pullback comes as some Canadians have shown greater reluctance to travel to the U.S. amid political tensions, including fallout from U.S. tariffs and immigration-related policies.
WORKERS FEEL IT FIRST
Economists say years of add-on fees and higher prices have left travelers feeling they pay more for less — a model that's harder to sustain as inflation weighs on budgets.
Recent Federal data underscores the squeeze: Las Vegas wages remain below the national average, while local inflation and unemployment are higher.
On the Strip, that shows up in tips and hours. Joe Spica, a bellman at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and a Culinary Workers Union shop steward, said visitor totals may not have collapsed, but spending has. "They're not tipping as much," he said.
For Spica, a father of three, the impact is immediate. "Tips have gone ridiculously down," he said. "And then when I go to the grocery store, every single thing I buy has somehow gone up."
Extra shifts at hotels and restaurants have begun to disappear. That's how slowdowns start, said Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226: not with big layoffs, but with vanishing hours that hit part-timers and on-call staff first.
Economists say the next test comes this spring, as households book summer travel. One early gauge will be drive-in traffic from Southern California, a key feeder market.
For some job seekers, the slowdown is already stark. Shuang Woo, 26, said she has struggled to land interviews and received a string of automated rejections. She recently enrolled in training to become a casino dealer.
"It's been really tough," she said. "The entire city runs on tourism."
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The real economy doesn't function as it does in a Milton Friedman fever dream. Neoliberal supply-side economics was always based on myths and fairy tales.
Trump is trying to manipulate the real economy using cliff notes for failed economic theories. And it appears Trump is doubling down on deluded. We're headed for a doozy of a financial crisis trying the raise the debt limit next year. It would be smart to start negotiations to raise the debt limit now. Too bad we're stuck with Trump who will kick the can till the last minute.
Or... just maybe..... people just want to go somewhere else on vacation.
Oh. Look.
Ah. Well.
Looks like "gambling away the mortgage while you drink cheap vodka" isn't quite as alluring to the oat milk latte crowd.
Overall foreign tourism to the US contracted by 6% during 2025 and early indications is that the contraction may continue further in 2026. So far in 2026, bookings at National Parks are down 42%. (Tourism contributed up to 10% of GDP prior to Jan., 2025. Trump's policies really are creating headwinds for growth of GDP.)
That's interesting.
I wonder why the article says that Disney isn't seeing the same decline.
I wonder also how much of this has to do with what we refer to as the k-shaped recovery. Affluent families are doing pretty well, but working class families are continuing to struggle.
I was in Mexico last week, and the cab drivers were telling us that this peak season he's as slow as they have seen in years.
A lot of the normal tourists in Mexico are Americans, so I wonder if that doesn't have more to do with our economy than it does with theirs or a global slowdown of some sort.
According to a little Google research, it appears that foreign visits to Disney properties has taken a nose dive. Domestic visitors appear to be climbing, though. So, for these types of family oriented venues it appears that Americans forgoing foreign travel may offset the loss of foreign tourism.
(NOTE: There has been an uptick in domestic cruises to avoid the hassles of passports, visas, and currency exchange. There have been a number of high end luxury cruise liners added to the Great Lakes cruise market.)
Relying on the same Google research, it appears American travel to Canada has collapsed but travel to Mexico has remained resilient. What surprised me is that there has actually been a surge in cross border travel with El Paso and Laredo experiencing a boom in day trips from Mexico. Apparently Tijuana, Ensenada, and Nuevo Laredo has experience an uptick in medical tourism. The Mexican border cities are attracting American tourists with lower prices.
That would seem to support the slower economy theory, the ICE shenanigans theory, and the Las Vegas is old news theory all at the same time.
Well, I can tell you for certain that among affluent middle aged white women, there is a sort of standing nervousness about crime and cartel activity.
That's going to be much worse now. We were in Jalisco last week driving on the very highway that has been closed today.
What this really means is that Las Vegas would inevitably be the casualty of legalizing gambling throughout the country.
do you have any kind of fun in your life?
The point is that if you're a person who likes to gamble, there are a lot more ways and places to do that now.
Blaming Trump for Las Vegas's woes makes about as much sense as blaming witches.
You have to understand, Trump is all powerful and responsible for everything, democrats are just victims of circumstance.
Trump's visa fees and stricter requirements for entry won't affect tourism? We're a services economy where tourism and hospitality makes a significant contribution to GDP.
This is 100% of their problem.