From the early days of the Rat Pack to the emergence of themed, family-friendly resorts in the 1980s and 1990s to the entertainment and nightlife revolution of the new millennium, the staying power of Las Vegas as an escapist playground has always hinged on its ability to adapt to shifting cultural tides.
In 2011, the city pounced on the opportunity to welcome a booming electronic dance music scene when it hosted the Electric Daisy Carnival, which now draws more than 500,000 attendees each year. Long seen as a liability in America’s gambling capital, professional sports have also arrived en masse and look poised to define a key slice of Vegas’ future.
As the destination navigates the next stage of its development, baby boomers—the first generation to be born after gambling was legalized statewide in 1931—are aging out of the market. In their stead, millennials—born between 1981 and 1996—now represent nearly 50% of all visitors. With its oldest members now in their twenties, Gen Z has also graduated into the disrupter role as casino operators work to court their unconventional travel habits.
Omnia
Derek Stevens, owner and operator of three Downtown Las Vegas casinos and the innovative mind behind the 21-and-older Circa Resort, is among the gaming shareholders who have been keeping a finger on the pulse of this new order.
“From a customer service perspective, the importance of experience has become far more—far more—important than what it used to be,” Stevens says. “When I started coming to Vegas, the main attraction was gambling. Now, the primary reason to take a trip is either for business or for some experiential entertainment.”
Millennial and Gen Z visitors will dictate the next era of the definitive Vegas experience, but the task of predicting just what that future might look like is far from simple. The traditional offerings of gaming, entertainment, nightlife, dining and retail are always evolving, and the taste and desires of younger generations seem to be shifting faster than what was sought out by their predecessors. How will Las Vegas stay ahead of the curve in the face of this rapidly accelerating demographic turnover?
Vibes vs. Numbers
While Gen Z tastes have been notably defined by the word “vibes,” the secret to understanding the next chapter of tourism in Southern Nevada inevitably starts with cold, hard data.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s annual visitor profile studies have done the heavy lifting on that front since 1975, but chief marketing officer Kate Wik helped modernize the process in 2022 by adding an online survey component. The 2024 study drew data from more than 5,400 responses, two-thirds of which remain tied to traditional in-person interviews.
It found that the average age of a Las Vegas tourist in 2024 was 43.6 years old, down from 46.2 in 2019 and 47.2 in 1992. Millennials made up 46% of the total visitor count, followed by Gen X at 38%. Gen Z and respondents who identified as “retired” each made up another 7%.
“Because it’s such a long-standing study, it gives us this unique ability to be able to understand how the market has gone through changes over the decades,” Wik says. “We are just constantly reinventing and reimagining who we are, what we are and the experiences we provide our visitor base.”
Famous Foods Street Eats at Resorts World
The results from the last few years also point to the industry’s increasing reliance on higher-income brackets. More than a quarter of those surveyed in 2024 claimed an annual household income of $150,000 or more, while an additional 21% reported earning at least $120,000.
“In the couple of years post-COVID, you’re seeing higher spend in terms of people just letting loose and not being as budget-conscious as maybe they once had been. Historically, it’s been known as a really great value escape, but over the past decade or so, we’ve really been building on the luxury offerings,” Wik says.
Still, the first five months’ worth of 2025 visitation statistics suggest a need to promote more budget-friendly offerings. Through the end of May, the LVCVA reports a 6.5% decrease in total visitors compared to numbers from the same period in 2024, while Harry Reid International Airport saw 3.7% fewer passengers in that span. It’s the fifth straight month in 2025 with lower visitation. Hotel occupancy and gaming revenues on the Strip were also down by more than a percent each year over year.
“Now you’re seeing consumer demand being more driven by value-driven messaging, budget-conscious travel opportunities and things of that nature,” Wik says, adding that Gen Z seems to be driving these trends more than any other group. “They’re sort of going off the beaten path more. It’s the most price-sensitive age bracket because they’ve got a lot of financial pressures, like paying off school debt. With the economic headwinds domestically right now, it’s expected that they’re going to taper off a little bit.”
Gambling in the Digital Age
In the early 2010s, as millennials were gradually inheriting a greater share of the Las Vegas tourism landscape, casinos were wrestling with the theory that their generation was significantly less interested in the traditional gambling experience than their parents and grandparents.
In response, some operators started rolling out new, modernized slot machine games that they hoped would retain notoriously flighty millennial attention spans. Stevens took it one step further when he began accepting the Bitcoin cryptocurrency as a form of payment in his properties in 2014, though this didn’t include gambling.
Their campaigns were seemingly successful, according to nearly eight in 10 millennial visitors—now 29 to 44 years old—who told the LVCVA they gambled at least once in 2024.
They combined to spend an average of $767.91 on gaming per trip last year. By comparison, 64% of Gen Z tourists who wagered at least once during their 2024 stay forked over nearly $200 less, while their 45- to 60-year-old Gen X cohorts retained the bulk of the spending in that category at $873.35 each.
“One thing that’s really apparent is that the younger generation has really been attracted to slots, which really wasn’t the case 20 years ago. These slots have become so good and so entertaining now, and I think younger generations that grew up playing video games are really into the ways of these new machines,” Stevens says.
As a high-rolling sports gambler himself, Stevens doesn’t shy away from addressing the elephant on the casino floor.
“I think the proliferation of sports wagering throughout the country has actually been a benefit to Las Vegas,” he says, referring to a sharp rise in online sportsbook betting that began in 2018, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1992 law that was originally designed to prevent casinos from spreading to new states.
“When that was overturned, I did a lot of interviews where people asked, is this going to be bad for Vegas? I told them it’s going to be good because it will get more people aware of sports wagering,” Stevens continues. “More people are going to start to like it, and when they do, they’re all eventually going to want to come to the mecca, which is Las Vegas.”
The Rise of Dayclubs
Las Vegas has been one of the country’s top nightclub destinations since the 1990s, but Stevens cites the continued development of the dayclub or pool party concept as a major reason why the average visitor age continues to trend lower.
Jason Strauss—co-CEO of Tao Group Hospitality, one of the most influential nightlife companies to help build the Vegas scene—credits former Hard Rock Casino executive Chad Pallas with launching the prototype dayclub, Rehab, in 2004. The Tao Group enhanced its portfolio a few years later with the launch of Tao Beach at Venetian, which was completely renovated in 2022.
Palm Tree Beach Club
“It was really catching on with the locals, and that’s where me and my partner saw a need,” Strauss says. “It shouldn’t only be Sundays and it shouldn’t just be at a casino pool. We thought there needed to be a specific venue dedicated to this type of experience, where people who were already going to the nightclubs could expect that same level of energy and service through a brother-sister relationship with a dayclub.”
Whether it’s at a luxurious Tao Group venue like the new Palm Tree Beach Club or Wynn’s Encore Beach Club, or a more casual and affordable option like Flamingo’s GO Pool, daylife in its various forms has become one of the “major fabrics of this city,” says Strauss, “and one of the primary drivers of casino business. Now, if you’re a casino and you don’t have big daylife, your ADR [average daily rate], casino play and even the amount of bubblegum bought in your convenience store is going to be affected.”
Though Gen Z visitors were fewer in 2024, they still managed to surpass millennial nightclub attendees, 30% to 18%, according to LVCVA data. The most recent visitor profile study doesn’t track dayclub attendance, but Strauss sees the Gen Z tendency to prefer group rates or all-inclusive packages as one explanation for an upward trajectory at these venues.
“You can fit 30 to 40 people in a cabana, but you can’t really do that at a nightclub table. So, there’s a value proposition tied to dayclubs that we weren’t really getting before,” he says.
The Arrival Moment
Strauss, Stevens and Wik frequently circled back to younger generations’ emphasis on “experience,” but Resorts World food and beverage executive Josef Wagner may have summarized it best when addressing it in dining terms.
“The biggest differentiator now is that you can no longer offer a restaurant with just great food and great service. A successful restaurant now needs to offer more,” he says. “It has to have an atmospheric aspect to it, or a type of entertainment that the guest feels immersed in. That’s a piece that’s still really resonating with younger visitors.”
In his view, the nostalgic image of the traditional American steakhouse has faded slightly as younger visitors continue to favor more exotic flavors and themes. Another factor, which he dubs “the arrival moment,” has also moved to the forefront.
“There’s a stage that’s not really about going in, sitting on a chair and actually having dinner at all. Now, when people get to the restaurant, they want to have this certain feeling where the lighting, music, ambiance and atmosphere becomes a thing,” Wagner says. “How does it make me feel when I arrive? Are there social media or picture moments I want to be part of? Above all else, that arrival moment is number one.”
Wagner’s belief that millennials “might spend a little bit more to get there” is supported by the data. They dropped an average of $636.80 per trip in the restaurant category last year en route to outspending the average Gen Z diner by roughly $96 per stay.
Wagner also likens efforts to personalize the food and beverage experience to tactics that are more commonly employed in other industries, like luxury vehicle sales. He’s seen the demand for this “underlooked” component of the millennial and Gen Z experience grow in recent years.
“If we customize your chopsticks, steak knife or napkin and embroider it with your name and things of that nature, the experience becomes much more memorable and ends up being something you will not forget,” Wagner says. “In food and beverage, we have to do this more, because I think it really makes you stand out.”
Now Trending
Another factor playing a bigger role in how younger generations prioritize their time in Las Vegas centers around Downtown. According to the LVCVA, 70% of Gen Z tourists visited the area last year, compared to just 47% of Gen X and 54% of millennial travelers.
“Over 50% of all the visitation in all of Vegas comes Downtown, yet Downtown only has less than 10% of the hotel rooms,” Stevens says. “We get just as many people from Wynn and Caesars Palace as we do from Tahiti Village and Circus Circus. The only thing I would really say differentiates the Downtown visitor from the Strip visitor, frankly, is that Downtown trends, probably, a year or two younger.”
Stevens credits part of this growth to the ongoing revitalization of Fremont Street and the free or affordable entertainment that he believes “has been very attractive to younger people.” But it’s clear the more organic local development of hip restaurants and bars in the Arts District is attracting more Vegas visitors as well.
Stadium Swim at Circa
Social media and the rise of influencers has obviously been another recent game changer. Wik cites Las Vegas as “the number one most followed destination in the world on TikTok,” while Strauss adds that younger visitors who visit his clubs are now “finding their fandom through what songs they use or see in their own personal social media experiences.”
Similarly, Wagner says it’s now common to see diners arrive knowing exactly what they want to order ahead of time after seeing a reel or post about a specific dish on Instagram or TikTok.
“They really want to be in the mix in places that have high visibility on social media platforms. I see that a little bit in nightlife, too, but the average nightlife beverage spend and major table spends are both down, I would say, across the Strip,” Wagner says, adding that he believes those trends are related to budget and discretionary income levels.
Evolving trends like these are absolutely crucial to the future of Las Vegas. Though studies have highlighted younger demographics as more willing to spend more on immersive experiences, most millennials and Gen Z Americans make far less than the average Strip visitor. Striking a balance between luxury and value will be paramount, Wik says.
“It’s really about making sure people understand that there’s also still a good value story in Las Vegas. Now, a lot of our messaging is, here are the top 10 free things to do in the market, or the top 10 things under $100,” she says. “Really, the onus is on us and all of our partners to create those reasons why consumers need to come visit us.”
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