There are conflicting reports across social media and the press that state Las Vegas crowds are struggling as of late, but are the reports accurate?

Reports say Las Vegas crowds aren’t as large as before

LVCVA monthly report

One major report published on the Las Vegas hotel industry is from LVCVA, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The report, published monthly, identifies trends in occupancy from the year prior, as well as other key subgroups. Some of the findings include:

• Visitor volume is down 7.3% year-over-year through June 2025
• Occupancy is down across the board
  • Strip occupancy is down 6.4%
  • Downtown occupancy is down 7%
  • Weekend occupancy is down 3.7% (but better than midweek occupancy at -7.1%)
• RevPAR (revenue per available room) is down a massive 7.8%
• Total enplaned and deplaned passengers is down 4.1%, but this includes those on connections that do not intend to visit Vegas
• Gaming revenue is holding steady at +0.2% this year, but that includes tricks the house uses to generate more money (raising minimum bets, replacing 3-to-2 blackjack payouts with 6-to-5, “000” roulette, crapless craps, etc.)

The important thing to note is that the results are subject to some variability based on sampling patterns, but the results paint a rather grim 2025 for casinos and Las Vegas crowds.

Canadians are not visiting Las Vegas in the same numbers

Without getting deep into the political weeds, the US and Canada are in the midst of a disagreement. This has caused many Canadians feeling resentment towards the United States, and has impacted travel. Canadians have only represented 3.6% of the traffic at LAS in 2024, but it will likely significantly fall in 2025.

Even if the numbers dropped to exactly 0%, it doesn’t fully explain the gap in the reported numbers from LVCVA. In other words, while Canadians may be contributing significantly to the financial results, they’re not the only thing dragging down the numbers.

Airlines are cutting back flights to LAS

The other shoe to drop is when airlines cut back on their flying. This can be based on forward-looking bookings or on other economic data. Earlier in the year, Air Canada reported reducing service to Las Vegas. The reduced capacity likely is a reaction to the aforementioned sentiment of the Canadian people.

While some of it is coming from the depressed Canadian demand, US airlines are seeing the pressure too. Spirit Airlines is cutting capacity by 42%. While some of it can be attributed to general poor financial results from Spirit, if the route is popular or generates revenue, they wouldn’t be cutting it.

Some are quick to brush it off

For every comment about the crowds that are supposedly staying away, there are plenty who point to the long lines at check-in. This has been an on-going problem in the post-COVID era.

There is also still optimism amongst CEOs on the outlook for 2025.

On top of that, there are some who believe the numbers don’t tell the whole story. As an example, the LVCVA report doesn’t state how many more people are bunking up with locals than they were in the past. I’m sure everyone knows someone local, right?

How to balance the reports on Las Vegas crowds?

I feel the answer is more nuanced and somewhere in between both realities.

First of all, that lower attendance isn’t going to be fully baked until a later date. There will be some discretionary, last-minute trips to Vegas that won’t happen. But some would have already booked their tickets to go to Vegas and will end up going because it’s not free to just cancel. As airlines reduce capacity, they will lower the number of potential Vegas attendees in the future, but the full impact wouldn’t be felt just yet.

I don’t place much weight into lengthy check-in lines. Finding the right balance between the number of hotel guests at these mega-resorts, those who use mobile check-in when available, and how much staff is available is tough. It could very well easily be that there aren’t enough staff members at the desk or an IT issue slowing down the process. A long check-in line doesn’t have to mean Las Vegas attendance is strong.

In regards to communications to the market, those are generally skewed positively. They don’t want investors to leave and will look for ways to signal strength. It’s just the way corporations emphasize the right numbers that help tell the story they want to communicate.

(Recall that those who have a vested interest in the viability of Las Vegas as a destination may be biased in reporting as well.)

In other words, the current state of Las Vegas crowds might not be that dramatically different than norm, but the pressure is still to come.

Recent experience for us in Las Vegas

We happened to be in Las Vegas this past weekend. Curiously, given all the conflicting reports, we wanted to see for ourselves how “dead” the city was. Sure enough, it was remarkably simple to drive down The Strip by 9PM on a Friday night. Aside from some lengthy red lights, we encountered very little car traffic. The same could also be said about Saturday.

What about check-in lines? There certainly was a lengthy line that our friends said took ~20 minutes to clear. Thankfully, we used mobile check-in that completely bypassed this line. So, despite the line length, the streets themselves weren’t packed with the Las Vegas crowds we expected.

Some casinos had more customers than others. If I had to put an informal weight to it, the nicer hotels had crowds that looked a bit more typical to historical levels for this time of the year.

Meanwhile, the casinos that are of lower quality (sorry, Flamingo fans) are a bit less crowded than others.

More telling than the crowds

Crowds are one thing, but I find it more compelling to look at the “deals”. At the Adventuredome, there are some special discounts for the season. This is perhaps more telling than anything else is whether there are discounts and how much they are. Well, their “summer special” rate is 50% off the price of admission. We considered buying at that price.

Also, table minimums for blackjack along The Strip were as low as $10 during the day and just $15 at major casinos at night. That’s not bad at all.

And Resorts World announced that during this summer, there are no resort fees to pay. That speaks in general to weaker demand. Las Vegas is the place where resort fees started, so it takes a lot for a hotel to waive them. That’s true even if they raise the base price to offset–I’d rather have them advertise the real price than to deceptively pass along an incorrect price until the purchase screen.

In total, we came away feeling there were slightly smaller crowds than in the typical summer. But there were some summer deals to be had that we didn’t recall finding in recent times. Of course, not everyone got the message as there still were some unquestionable rip-offs in town, so don’t assume everything is a winner. Like everything else, the real answer on the Las Vegas crowds is very nuanced

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