The year 2024 served as a victory lap of sorts in the Las Vegas tourism industry’s recovery from the pandemic. Emboldened by its first-time status as the host of the Super Bowl, Las Vegas set a high mark in visitor spending for the third consecutive year, pulling in $55.1 billion from a visitor count that fell just 800,000 people shy of the 42.5 million who came here in 2019.
Early reports from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) indicate that 2025 may mark a departure from this trend. Through March, year-over-year visitation was down 6.9% when compared to the first three months of 2024, while 3.7% fewer passengers flew to and from Harry Reid International Airport. Hotel occupancy has also taken a slight hit, while gaming revenue at Strip casinos was down 4.8% in March as compared to last year.
It’s too early to tell if this lull will mark the end of Las Vegas’ recent tourism boom, but it’s notable in that it seems to coincide with President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. His tariff-fueled trade war has eroded consumer confidence, while his divisive immigration policies and talk of installing Canada as the 51st state have yielded lower passenger counts on popular Mexican and Canadian airlines.
In turn, LVCVA CEO and President Steve Hill says the organization and its “partners in the resort industry” are expecting a “downtown this summer.”
“That downturn could be relatively shallow and relatively short-lived, or there could be decisions that are made that exacerbate it,” Hill tells the Weekly. “At the core of what we think is happening right now is that consumer confidence is down pretty significantly.”
The Nevada Legislature’s Economic Forum—five independent economists tasked with formulating tax revenue projections to aid the state’s political leaders in budget-crafting—also appears to be bracing for impact. On May 1, the group decreased its forecast for the upcoming biennium by $191 million.
Economist and UNLV professor Stephen Miller points out another useful metric in a collaboration between the International Monetary Fund’s World Uncertainty Index, a measure of consumer confidence that he says is now “the highest it’s ever been.”
Trump’s tariff rollout, which was officially announced April 2 but frequently alluded to during and after the 2024 election, is playing a sizable role in the swing, he adds. On May 12, Trump reduced a 145% tariff on Chinese imports to 30% for a 90-day period in a move that created even more fluctuation in an already unpredictable trade landscape.
“The major effect of the tariffs was the fact that the administration was putting them on, taking them off, changing the size, raising and lowering them and making special deals. That uncertainty is playing havoc with the markets,” Miller says.
The outlook for international air-travel is similarly discouraging. In March, the number of tourists visiting via Air Canada decreased by 5.9% compared to 2024, while Aeromexico recorded a 17.9% year-over-year reduction. On May 6, Canadian carrier WestJet Airlines announced that it was suspending its route from Edmonton, Alberta to Las Vegas in July and August. Domestic airlines like American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue and Southwest have opted to pull their 2025 forecasts altogether.
According to the LVCVA, one in every eight visitors in 2023 and 2024 came from abroad. Miller says the “biggest contingent” of them come from Canada.
“We’re getting very strong signals that Canadians are pissed and they’re not going to come to Vegas,” Miller says.
Hill says the initial booking numbers for the next few months confirm that these figures are likely to continue to shrink in the second fiscal quarter. According to LVCVA data, more than half of Las Vegas’ 2024 visitors either planned or booked their trip more than one month in advance.
“All of them at this point are probably concerned, in that same kind of level as March, about the summer months,” Hill says of resort industry stakeholders. “We see slower bookings as we head into summer. We’ll see how that translates into what actually happens.”
The LVCVA has budgeted accordingly. Last week, when board members revealed the preliminary budget for the 2026 fiscal year, it included a $51 million deficit with a general fund balance that dipped below $100 million for the first time since the 2022 fiscal year. Despite those reductions, it also calls for a $37 million increase for advertising.
Hill cites two reasons behind investing in advertising.
“One is the concern around a potential slowdown and the need to push harder. The other is that we have been able, because of the big investments in Formula 1 and the Super Bowl in particular, to amplify the marketing around those big events,” he says.
Miller, who predicted late last year that a COVID-related restructuring of the local labor market would put a damper on tourism and gaming revenue in 2025 and 2026, says the industry may have no choice but to gear up for the long haul as Trump’s federal policies play themselves out.
“You can do everything in the world to try to insulate yourself from downturns, but in our economy, we’re so reliant on the leisure and hospitality sector that, if visitors don’t come, you’re sort of dead in the water,” Miller says.
Hill admits that Las Vegas resorts are dealing with a relatively unprecedented phenomenon.
“We haven’t seen anything like this before. Certainly not in recent times, and not for these reasons,” he says.
Still, he believes Las Vegas’ tourism industry is well-equipped to survive an extended lag because it entered 2025 in “exceptional financial shape” and has long displayed a knack for overcoming economic challenges that are “much worse than what we’re seeing right now.”
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