According to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the tourism numbers in Las Vegas are down. Significantly down. There was an 11.3% decrease in the number of visitors in June 2025 compared with June 2024.
As someone who was recently a visitor in Las Vegas, I can tell you why fewer people are traveling to Sin City. It’s because it’s a terrible place and I hate it.
OK fine, that’s not really why. Experts speculate it’s because international travel to the United States is down overall.
But I’m still going to use this news as an opportunity to grind my Las Vegas hate axe.
I’m willing to respect almost any city in the world. I’m willing to examine the circumstances that make a city what it is, even if what it is is not great. I’m willing to give almost any city the benefit of the doubt, and hope for its betterment.
But not Vegas. I will never respect Vegas. I’ve just been embarrassed by it too many times before.
Despite our notorious sobriety and abstinence from gambling, many Utahns (NOT Utahans) have spent quite a bit of time in Vegas. Because it’s a halfway point to Disneyland and/or Newport Beach. Why are those the only two places Utahns go on vacation? No one knows. But the point is, most family road trips from Utah to California include a night spent in a hotel/casino. Whatever hotel/casino had the best deal on Expedia.com.
A lot of us born and raised Utahns have memories of our parents yelling at us not to touch slot machines as we headed for the MGM Grand or Excalibur exit to the minivan or Suburban waiting in the valet pull-up. “Thank goodness we’re getting out of here,” one parent usually said, because Vegas is, emphatically, not for families.
Before you type out that angry email, let me clarify — I don’t hate the general area of Nevada we tend to colloquially refer to as Vegas. Henderson, Summerlin, and the other Vegas suburbs are all lovely. I have friends from all those places and love them dearly.
I also understand that there is luxury to be enjoyed in the city. Some of the nation’s finest restaurants and shopping await in the higher end hotels. I’m just not of that particular tax bracket. I’m of the tax bracket that looks for free continental breakfast with the stay I booked using Marriott points.
It’s the Las Vegas Strip in its entirety that I have a real problem with. Well, the Strip and the airport. But one beef at a time.
The Strip feels like the play corner of every kindergarten classroom, just blown up by a magnitude of 1,000. The hotels and casinos appear to have been designed to attract the attention of 5-year-olds, but are part of an entertainment district geared exclusively to adults. Why is there a COLORFUL CASTLE? Why is there a replica of New York City? The Eiffel Tower? A CIRCUS-THEMED HOTEL??? Are we toddlers? It’s all so EMBARRASSING.
My friend — also a lifelong Utahn — and I thought we might be able to avoid the Vegas experience of our childhoods by flying instead of driving, and booking a hotel outside the Strip. We were only willing to visit our least-favorite city for the Beyonce Cowboy Carter tour, which is a real testament to our love for Beyonce.
Other than some extreme turbulence, our journey to Vegas was unremarkable and far better than sitting in the back of a family vehicle for six hours.
Obviously, the Beyonce show was perfect and life-changing and most importantly, not on the Strip. Allegiant Stadium, where she performed, is just outside of it. After the show, half of the attendees made their way to the clubs and casinos downtown. They were all fools, I thought, rather ungenerously, as my friend and I waited in the stadium parking lot for an Uber back to the nice, quiet Marriott.
We waited for a while. Because the Uber app kept crashing. After a half an hour or so of failing to connect with a driver, we realized there were too many of us in one location trying to request a car all at once. We needed to walk away from the concentrated crowd to have a better chance of getting a ride. And there was only one place to walk to.
So, while eating a healthy dose of crow, we walked like lambs to the slaughter over the pedestrian bridge toward Mandalay Bay. Therein, we walked past a small group of inebriated individuals watching a Killers cover band play Mr. Brightside at 1 a.m.
“This is so sad,” my friend and I murmured to each other. Then we were immediately hit with the stench of vomit upon entering the sticky parking garage, where other forlorn looking Beyonce attendees had their phones open, refreshing the Uber app.
Forty sweaty minutes later, we connected with a driver and made it back to our hotel. We woke up the next morning ready to get out of America’s worst city. So we headed to the Harry Reid International Airport.
Which brings me to my second beef — the Vegas airport.
The journey home got off to a bad start with the security screening, during which a TSA employee mentioned that the body scan machine seemed to be malfunctioning. Indeed, when my friend walked through the machine it beeped and she was told she would have to be subjected to a pat down. As I watched her being examined by the back of a TSA agent’s hand, it was hard not to feel like the terrorists had won.
But all told, we made it through security fairly quickly and to our gate just in time, we thought, for boarding. But then there was no boarding. Our flight was delayed. Because, according to the gate agents, a crew member was missing.
The one-hour delay turned into a four-hour delay when the crew member failed to show. And we sat, stranded in the terminal, occasionally serenaded by the sounds of the slot machines other travelers played at an excruciatingly high volume. “Maybe we should have driven,” we said to each other. We thought we had outsmarted Vegas by flying. But, of course, the house always wins.
After the second delay was announced, we received meal vouchers from the airline. But the only places we could use them were Chili’s, which had a wait list, and Quiznos, of the singing hamster commercials from a couple of decades ago.
Eventually a replacement crew member arrived at the gate, and it was time to board for real. Out of desperation and also spite, we used our meal vouchers to spend $48 at Quiznos on chips, candy, and soda, which we planned to consume on what should have been a very short flight home. But once we were all on board, our pilot announced that there would be a 45-minute delay before we could take off. THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS.
We arrived in Salt Lake City six hours later than expected, roughly the time it would have taken to drive. Upon arrival, I swear our city has never looked so beautiful. Never again would we let Vegas embarrass us, my friend and I swore.
At least not until Beyonce’s next tour.
Or the next trip to Disneyland.