An uptick in videos painting Las Vegas as a ghost town has people wondering where all the tourists have gone.
Featured Video“I ain’t never seen Vegas look like this on a Saturday at one in the morning,” @chasasworld narrates over a TikTok showing the practically empty streets of Sin City. “Where’s the people? Holy shit, dude.”
And this wasn’t some one-off fluke incident. @chasasworld has repeatedly shared videos taken on different days at different times, explaining how bizarre it’s been lately compared to the activity the city is used to seeing.
Advertisement“This is a Thursday at 8pm with Beyoncé in town,” she says in another video. “This place is usually packed. Even in the summer, you’re going to see way more people than this.”
She isn’t the only one who’s noticed something is up. There are also videos from other TikTokers explore both outdoors and inside casinos and hotels, shocked at how empty things have become.
Has Las Vegas seen a decline in tourism?
The facts back up these TikTok anecdotes. Compared to the same months in 2024, tourism has consistently been down in Las Vegas in the first half of the year. Hotel occupancy has largely been down as well, and flights into the city from Canada saw a major drop in May.
AdvertisementIf this were an isolated problem with Vegas tourism, that would be concerning enough. The city relies on that industry, and a decrease in profit could lead to a decrease in jobs, which can have a ripple effect on an economy.
But Vegas is only one part of a larger problem in which tourism is dropping across the whole country. In fact, Vegas hotels aren’t even the ones that have seen the sharpest summer drop—that would be Houston, Texas.
“[This is] the largest drop we’ve seen year-over-year, month-over–month this century other than in a crisis (such as Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, the pandemic and Great Recession),” Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill said earlier this week. “The top of the market is still doing fine and not having any difficulty, but folks around the country are concerned about their jobs and their financial situation causing them to hesitate.”
AdvertisementWhy is tourism declining?
As for why this is happening, everyone’s pointing fingers in a different direction. Companies are charging too much for every little thing, there’s financial uncertainty between whatever’s going on with tariffs on any given day and the overall U.S. economy, international visitors are too afraid or too angry to come to the U.S. because of all the immigration issues.
It’s likely all of these factors play a role in the decline in tourism. Consumer spending within the U.S. has dropped sharply as folks fret over increased prices thanks to Trump’s tariffs. At the same time, international travel to Las Vegas fell by a whopping 13% in June, and Canadian travel to the U.S. has been down across the board in the first half of the year.
It’s unclear how this will play out in moving forward. The new $250 visa charge for some travelers is likely to create some complications. Meanwhile, thinly veiled threats aimed at attendees of international sporting events coming to the U.S. certainly aren’t helping with the optics that the U.S. isn’t currently a safe or welcoming place to foreign travelers.
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As much as some people are determined to believe this is isolated proof that Vegas and only Vegas is finally getting some sort of comeuppance for being an overpriced tourist town, there are plenty of other folks who are taking note and sharing their larger concerns.
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