Despite Growing Concerns, Las Vegas Continues to Satisfy Travelers, LVCVA Claims
Posted on: March 12, 2025, 02:27h.
Last updated on: March 12, 2025, 02:56h.
- The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has unveiled its 2024 Las Vegas Visitor Profile Study
- The LVCVA says Las Vegas continues to satisfy visitors
- Some visitors have recently spoken negatively about Las Vegas on social media
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) released its 2024 Las Vegas Visitor Profile Study this week. The data suggests that nearly all visitors to Southern Nevada last year were satisfied with their trip.
Hop on social media and peruse popular Vegas-specific accounts like Casino.org’s very own Scott Roeben, the Strip insider behind the Vital Vegas account, and you’ll quickly find opinions that Las Vegas has turned off its core demographic. Whether it be resort fees, parking fees, $25 cocktails, high table minimums, poor slot payouts, 6:5 blackjack, or double-zero roulette, frustration is seemingly at a boiling point.
The annual LVCVA guest survey refutes those claims and reports that nearly all tourists and convention visitors last year left fulfilled. The visitor profile reports that nearly nine in 10 (87%) guests were “very satisfied” and another 10% were “somewhat satisfied. Just 2% said they left “dissatisfied.”
Las Vegas has supposedly retained its core base, too. The survey found that 86% of the 41.7 million people who visited Sin City last year had been there before. Though the LVCVA painted that positively by suggesting that Southern Nevada keeps “visitors coming back for more,” it could also suggest that the market isn’t attracting new audiences.
Just 14% of the 41.7 million people who arrived in Las Vegas last year were first-timers. That’s down 10% from 2019.
No Problems Here
Nevada gaming revenue reached a new high for a fourth consecutive year, with 2024 gamblers’ losses mounting upwards of $15.6 billion. Gross gaming revenue on the Strip, however, was down 1% from 2023, despite overall visitation climbing over 2%.
Officials at the LVCVA, the government agency tasked with promoting the destination for leisure and business, naturally painted 2024 positively.
Nearly all visitors were satisfied with their visit, and even more than in past years were likely to say that Las Vegas significantly exceeded their expectations,” the LVCVA declared.
Visitors in 2024 stayed slightly longer, spent more on lodging, food, drinks, and shopping, and the average age trended downward from almost 44 years old in 2023 to 43.6 last year.
The annual report is compiled through “visitor surveys” conducted in-person and online. The LVCVA claims it fielded approximately 300 monthly in-person interviews and 150 online. In total, the 2024 visitor profile was based on guest experiences from fewer than 5,500 visitors.
Las Vegas Budget, Behaviors
The 2024 Visitor Profile found that guests who gambled spent less time gambling — about 2.5 hours a day, down a half-hour from 2021. That could be because their losses mount quicker, as gambling losses per trip reached a record high of $820 last year, up considerably from $591 in 2019 to mark the fourth straight year of record gaming spending.
The average guest spent $615 on food and drink, $281 on shopping, and $160 on local transportation — all year-over-year increases. Spending on entertainment/shows, however, decreased 42% to just $63. Average spending on sports tumbled 17%.
As for rooms, the average nightly rate (exclusive of comped rooms) was $179, up 4%.
Last Comment ( 1 )
Also, the drop from 94% Very Satisfied in 2019 to 87% in 2024 would seem like a modest drop to a lot of people, but it's actually a plunge. Flip the numbers and look at the % who are not very satisfied: 6% on 2019 to 13% in 2024. So in five years, the % of visitors who are not Very Satisfied MORE THAN DOUBLED. That's my headline if I'm writing about this.