Las Vegas' full house

Las Vegas no doubt was having difficulties in 2025, with visitor numbers falling 7.5% from a year earlier. If you watched videos on social media about the smaller crowds — or even read some of the news headlines — you might have gotten the impression that Vegas had fallen into an abyss, that a recovery was out of reach.

Lena Brown laughs when she recalls last summer’s proclamations that Las Vegas had lost its luster.

“Vegas is mobbed all the time,” said Brown, a luxury travel advisor with Largay Travel who is based in Las Vegas. “The shows are sold out, you can’t get dinner reservations at the hot spots and the hotel rates are still astronomical.”

Travelers can put a dent in high hotel rates by taking advantage of promotional deals, however.

Massachusetts residents Chris and Cathy Cusack took a four-day trip to Las Vegas in early March, spurred by an enticing deal from MGM Resorts — 40% off the room rate and free parking at The Reserve at Park MGM, where the Cusacks had stayed before when the hotel-within-a-hotel was called the NoMad Las Vegas.

To incentivize spending at the Park MGM, the promotional offer also included 8,500 MGM Rewards tier credits if $750 was spent at the hotel, a dollar amount easily reached during the Cusacks’ stay.

Chris said the hotel’s restaurants were full and that he was glad to have made reservations for the places where they dined, including The Library Restaurant and Bavette’s Steakhouse.

Generally, the Park MGM was busy, he said, the hotel packed with hockey fans wearing jerseys of the Minnesota Wild and Edmonton Oilers, two teams that played the Las Vegas Golden Knights at nearby T-Mobile Arena during the Cusacks’ stay. 

Also, many guests in their 30s and 40s were at the hotel to see the rock band 311 perform two concerts at Park MGM’s Dolby Live theater.

With the hotel and restaurant deals secured, the Cusacks splurged on entertainment, purchasing tickets to see “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere,” a very popular ticket these days. The show is a 4D version of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1939 film classic re-created for the Sphere’s screen. Audiences are immersed in the show with the addition of multisensory effects. 

Brown recently had a group of Florida clients headed to Las Vegas just to see “Wizard” at the Sphere. 

She had also just booked three suites at the MGM Grand for a family coming with grandchildren to enjoy entertainment and the resort pool. 

Brown’s Vegas client mix runs the gamut, from bachelor parties and anniversary trips to milestone birthdays and sports travel.

“Where are you going to go and stay for four or five nights and get all the pools, great dining and shows?” she said. “One night you can do a magic show, the next one, the Sphere, and the next, a headliner. Vegas has it all in one spot.”

These trips aren’t outliers. Brown said her Las Vegas business is thriving so far this year.

Ed Gillis, director of business development at business event management firm PRA and a 25-year Las Vegas resident, was similarly bemused by last year’s social media frenzy about the city’s decline.

Gillis said he typically spends three to five days a week on the Strip visiting hotel partners and has found himself “kind of laughing a little bit that this narrative is out there, because I know we’ve got 1,000 executives at one meeting, 6,000 at another and 5,000 at another.”

“The numbers don’t lie,” said Gillis. “We certainly could use a few more visitors — we’re not going to sugarcoat that side of it. But things are not as bad as people think with some of the social media stuff.”

Last summer’s reality

Nevertheless, last year’s struggles were real. Howard Stutz, senior reporter at The Nevada Independent, said news coverage was hardly sensationalized, calling the city’s fall in visitors “probably its worst decline since the pandemic.”

Data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) shows that 2025 visitor volume fell 7.5% year over year, to approximately 38.5 million visitors. Hotels’ full-year RevPAR dropped 8.8%, and ADR slid 5%. Hotel occupancy averaged 80.3%, down 3.3 percentage points, and air passenger volume fell 7.5%.

“It wasn’t tumbleweeds blowing down the Strip,” said Stutz. “But there were concerns.”

Much of that concern stemmed from Las Vegas’ outsize reliance on tourism.

“Las Vegas is the least diversified economy of its size in the U.S. today,” said Jeremy Aguero, a principal analyst with Applied Analysis. “This economy was designed to do one thing, and that is host people.”

That dependency, he added, means external shocks tend to hit Las Vegas harder than most cities. He pointed to 9/11 and the Great Recession of 2008 as examples.

Michael Stathokostopoulos, senior director of hospitality analytics at CoStar Group, pointed to a sharp drop in international visitation as a major issue. Canada accounts for nearly half of all international arrivals to Las Vegas, he said, but political tensions between Canada and the U.S. drove Canadian visitation down approximately 30% in 2025. International arrivals continued to decline into 2026, down roughly 15% in January and approximately 10% in February.

Also, soft consumer confidence and high prices pushed away budget-conscious travelers last year, Stathokostopoulos added, pointing out that Las Vegas hotel rates currently sit at roughly 42% above 2019 levels. 

Stutz said many resort operators have taken note of the high prices, offering promotional deals to stimulate demand.

“The biggest companies on the Strip have acknowledged that they maybe got out over their skis in terms of pricing,” said Stutz. “They’ve realized that when you open a minibar and a bottle of water is $25, that’s nuts.”

Promotions boost sales

Vegas resorts are also getting creative with promotions.

The Circa Resort & Casino, D Las Vegas and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino have addressed the Canadian visitation slump head-on with the At Par promotion, which treats the Canadian dollar as equal to the U.S. dollar across select room, gaming and beverage offerings through Aug. 31. In its first month, the three downtown resorts reported that the promotion had drawn more than 15,000 Canadian visitors and generated more than 2,700 hotel bookings, prompting the properties to extend and expand the initiative to include two DJ events. 

Resorts World Las Vegas launched Conrad Complete, which the property billed as “the first luxury inclusive experience on the Las Vegas Strip.” 

Available as an add-on for Conrad tower guests from May 26 to Sept. 8, the package is priced at $150 per guest, per night and includes valet parking, access to a private Club 66 lounge with breakfast and evening cocktails, prix-fixe dining across five signature restaurants, priority access to the resort’s newly renovated pool complex and entry to the Zouk Nightclub. 

Situated at the quieter north end of the Strip, the property has had to think creatively about how to attract more guests, said Josef Wagner, senior vice president of operations at Resorts World Las Vegas. 

At $150 per person, he added, the package speaks to a summer traveler who, even at the high end of the market, may have grown more value-conscious.

Last Wednesday, MGM Resorts International announced it was launching an all-inclusive experience on the Strip, bundling hotel accommodations, daily resort fee, dining, entertainment and parking into a single upfront price — starting at $330 plus tax for a two-night stay for two guests — at Luxor Hotel & Casino and Excalibur Hotel & Casino.

Early signs of turnaround 

Promotional efforts by Las Vegas hotels appear to be working. Preliminary CoStar data for February showed hotel occupancy rising 6 percentage points year over year, to 77%, and RevPAR climbing 3.6%, to $148.10. 

Stathokostopoulos called February’s performance encouraging, attributing the improvement to a strong conference calendar, favorable calendar dynamics — including Valentine’s Day falling on a Saturday — and an extended Backstreet Boys residency at the Sphere.

The recent data reflects a broader shift in optimism. Sean McBurney, Caesars Entertainment’s chief commercial officer and regional vice president, said, “Business trends continue to improve, and we’re excited by that. We’re feeling great about 2026.”

Kyle Owusu, director of credit research and lead casino and gaming analyst at Octus, said his company forecasts positive year-over-year comparisons for the summer ahead. He pointed to tailwinds from beneficial tax policy changes and potential overflow visitation from the World Cup soccer tournament. Eight matches will be played in Los Angeles, possibly prompting fans to tack on a Las Vegas visit.

Longer term, he sees the city leaning even further into sports, entertainment and events to help drive demand, a pivot he views as essential to attracting younger consumers who have low interest in gambling. Aguero at Applied Analysis shares a similar view, pointing out that Las Vegas already has roughly 325,000 seats across its major entertainment and sports venues, which he views as critical to the city’s ability to reach experience-driven travelers. 

“Whether it’s sports, entertainment or food, Las Vegas has the ability to reach a broad demographic base across the spectrum,” he said. 

According to Aguero, that diversity of appeal remains one of the market’s biggest assets.

Conventions are king

Conventions was one business segment that didn’t take a hit last year, and it continues to thrive.

Per the LVCVA, the city’s full-year 2025 convention attendance was up 9.6% year over year, and that momentum has extended into early 2026, with January convention attendance rising 6.9% year over year, to 672,100 attendees. This bump in convention business likely helped RevPAR at Las Vegas Strip hotels to $179.03 this past January, a 4.5% increase, said the LVCVA.

On a two-year basis, convention attendance growth is up roughly 21%, an especially strong figure, said Owusu. 

“Convention attendance tends to skew a little higher in terms of what they’re able to spend per room, because corporate budgets are usually higher,” said Owusu. “And it also usually helps with midweek occupancy.”

When it comes to major conventions and events, Gillis said Las Vegas has few direct competitors. 

“There are tons of hotel rooms on the Strip, an abundance of meeting spaces and an abundance of restaurants,” he said, adding that the city offers a depth of ancillary programming, from concerts and shows to sports, and that’s difficult to replicate elsewhere. 

“I don’t want to say Las Vegas sells itself, but it gives us something that’s very easy to sell,” Gillis said.

This year and next are effectively booked up, said Marti Winer, senior vice president and regional general manager for Hosts Global Las Vegas, which manages destination event services for corporate groups.

“A planner who is looking to book in Las Vegas right now would be incredibly hard-pressed to find something for 2026 and, quite honestly, for most of 2027,” she said. 

Part of what makes Las Vegas so attractive for groups, Winer added, is the city’s ability to innovate. She pointed to an appetite among planners for experiences that go beyond the ballroom, from private events at Allegiant Stadium to Formula 1 racing simulators at Grand Prix Plaza to outdoor excursions to Red Rock Canyon.

“Las Vegas is masterful at flexibility,” she said. “We know how to pivot on a dime. We can make things happen that, in fairness, most other cities just can’t. With the amount of rooms and space and venues, we have size on our side, but we also have creativity.”