Deputy Editor
Las Vegas tourism is in decline, and the Strip is looking for anyone to blame but itself. Crime is the latest scapegoat, but all I can think of is the meme of Tim Robinson in a hot dog suit “trying to find out” who crashed the Wienermobile.
Rampant price gouging has made a city once famous for its hospitality an inhospitable tourist destination. People will only stomach so much before they start voting with their wallets and staying away.
Yes, there’s a political aspect to this that casinos have limited control over. The Trump administration’s foreign policy and caustic comments have turned off international travelers. But domestic tourism is down as well.
I had to laugh as I read a recent story from The Nevada Independent. The Nevada Resort Association—whose board of directors includes someone from just about every Las Vegas casino you’ve heard of—wants to bring back the infamous Resort Corridor Court.
That court’s sole purpose was to prosecute petty crime on the Strip, with the idea of removing repeat offenders from the area. But its two-year run was an “administrative nightmare” and didn’t do much to reduce crime. That’s not to say that the crime rate is up. It has been declining for a while, including in the year since the Resort Corridor Court experiment came to an end.
It takes serious mental gymnastics to connect declining tourism with crime when the crime rate is also declining. If these people want to see a crime (metaphorically, of course), they should check the prices at the amenities on their own properties.
What The Stats Say About Vegas Tourism And Crime
The Las Vegas Review-Journal released a number of statistics highlighting Vegas’ issues. Since last year:
- Visitor volume dropped 7.3%
- Room occupancy rates dropped 2.1%
- Passenger volume at Harry Reid International Airport dropped 4.1%
- Revenue per available room is down 7.6%
For a city with an economy based so heavily on tourism, a 7.3% drop seems fairly alarming. Nevada doesn’t seem likely to suddenly become a big exporter of oil or oranges, so turning that number around seems paramount.
As The Nevada Independent reported, the resorts want to target crime as a possible explanation. They’re blustering about how tourists won’t come back if they don’t feel safe.
But, the statistics say crime is down on the Strip. The number of reported crimes provided by the LVPD is down 11% year-to-date. Burglary, theft, and robbery are all down between 10% and 15%. Homicide is down 30%.
Even in absolute terms, the FBI’s rates of reported crimes don’t paint a particularly sinful picture of Sin City. Using the crime stats from the 200 largest reporting U.S. cities in 2024, Las Vegas ranks below the median in violent crimes per 100,000 residents. In terms of danger, the closest comparisons are Fargo, N.D., and Providence, R.I..
Vegas Resorts Rob Tourists Blind
I lived in Vegas for year and spent countless hours walking the Strip. The only beatings I ever saw were those delivered to the wallets of visitors. The only robberies I’ve seen on the Strip are committed by the casinos, price-gouging on everything from table game rules to basics like cookies and coffee.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed that Vegas keeps getting more expensive. The grumbling about resort fees in particular has become louder over the years. While I completely agree that those have gotten out of hand, they’re just one easy, high-profile target.
At least one Vegas casino is now offering quadruple-zero roulette. Triple-zero was already an abomination, but a house edge of almost 8% wasn’t enough, apparently.
Need a snack? How does a $6.25 chocolate chip cookie sound? Or a $33 orange juice?
Parking at ARIA on the weekends costs $25. That’s not just the maximum rate for a certain number of hours. It’s a flat $25 even if you just park, run bad, blow your gambling budget for the day in 30 minutes, and want to leave. It doesn’t matter if you lost $3,000 at blackjack or paid hundreds of dollars in rake at a poker table. They’re still going to reach into your pocket to pinch out an extra $25.
Meanwhile, they keep clawing back what you get for your dollar. Look at comps.
Caesars properties in Las Vegas reportedly stopped providing free Starbucks to their Diamond Elite members earlier this year. Keep in mind that Diamond Elite is the second-highest publicly accessible tier in the Caesars Rewards hierarchy. Achieving it through slots play requires $375,000 in wagers, and likely five figures in losses. But free coffee in return was too generous.
I recently visited a Caesars property with a friend who has “7 Stars” status, which requires double the spend of Diamond Elite. Needing a boost late in the night, I asked him to get me Red Bull. Not even that was comped.
The fact that resorts now won’t even give their biggest spenders a $5 drink on the house is emblematic of the general approach that every single transaction has to put an immediate nickel in some greedy shareholder’s pocket.
Nobody cares to play the long game anymore.
Las Vegas No Longer A Unique Gambling Draw
It’s hard to understand that level of entitlement from an industry that’s seen better days.
If Vegas still had the near-monopoly on gambling it once enjoyed, I could grasp why there’d be an impulse to take advantage of that. But casino companies are trying harder to than ever to exploit their leverage, even as they have less and less of it. Legal gambling is almost everywhere. People can vote with their wallets, avoid Las Vegas, and give their business to dozens of places that offer comparable experiences.
I recently visited Texas, a state that doesn’t even have legal casinos. It does have card clubs offering poker, though, and my friend and I gave our action to several over the course of roughly a week. The differences were stark.
House edge? We probably paid less than $15 per hour in average rake during our trip.
Food and drink? When we checked out The Lodge in Round Rock (owned by Doug Polk), I walked next door and got a great meal at an Indian restaurant for less than the price of a glass of juice at the ARIA. One morning, we woke up and drove to Round Rock Donuts, where we paid less than $20 for a dozen delectable donuts and some coffee. I got a top-shelf cocktail for $12 from Texas Card House in Dallas.
Resort fees? I woke up every day and worked out at the hotel gym with no hidden charge tacked onto my bill.
Whatever action we wanted was available, too. I could play as big as I wished. There was a $3,000 tournament at The Lodge. One room in Houston dealt $100/$200 five-card Pot-Limit Omaha on the night we came in.
Look In The Mirror, Vegas Resorts
I suggest the board members of the Nevada Resort Association look in the mirror. Stop lobbying for weird court systems that do nothing to address the experience of the average visitor. Instead, ask how you can provide a value proposition that will get people back to Vegas.
International relations with Canada aside, maybe people are finally just waking up to the ridiculous grift that Las Vegas has become.
Nevada casinos pulled in $15.6 billion of gross gaming revenue in 2024. They can afford to provide a great experience to tourists, but they simply prefer to lean into pure, unchecked greed.
According to the American Gaming Association, every state besides Utah, Hawaii, South Carolina, and Georgia has some form of legal gambling. More states (34) have legal online sports betting than don’t.
The fact that my own home state—stubborn, ultra-conservative Nebraska—has multiple casinos says a lot about how swiftly and completely things have changed.
What are Las Vegas resorts offering that these other states aren’t? If you want tourists to flock to your city, you have to provide something special that they can’t get near home.
Quadruple-zero roulette and $6 cookies ain’t it, folks. Nobody is avoiding the strip because of crime. They’re avoiding it because they’re tired of being nickel-and-dimed at every turn.
Image credit: Jean Beaufort (license)
