Visitation to Las Vegas drops nearly 9% in September, gaming win also down

Summer visitation to Southern Nevada ended on a sour note as the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority on Wednesday reported an 8.8 percent downturn in tourism in September, the ninth straight month of declines.

The poor performance was expected since two of the previous three months had double-digit percentage decreases and the LVCVA didn’t jump-start tourism with its “Fabulous Las Vegas” promotional campaign until later in September.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board earlier Wednesday reported a slight decline in gaming win, anticipated because Labor Day weekend visitation began and was counted in August.

Midweek visitation slumped the most because of a major quadrennial convention, MINExpo, with 45,000 attendees, not gathering in 2025 and because Oracle CloudWorld (30,000 attendees) came in October this year, rather than in September like it did last year.

The LVCVA counted 3.1 million visitors for the month with convention attendance, down 18.7 percent, accounting for 428,400 visitors.

Other key metrics also showed declines in September. Hotel occupancy was down 5.2 percentage points to 78.7 percent with midweek occupancy off 6.7 points to 74.4 percent. Weekend occupancy was down 0.1 points to 90.3 percent.

The average daily room rate fell 2.9 percent to $190.56, which was still more than $10 above the annual average of $180.07.

Revenue per available room, a profitability measure, was off 9 percent to $149.47 in September.

One metric that was up in September was auto traffic on major highways into Las Vegas, calculated by the Nevada Department of Transportation. It reported an average 43,101 daily vehicles on Interstate 15 at the California-Nevada border, up 3.4 percent from a year ago, and 130,564 vehicles on all major highways, up 2.5 percent from September 2024. NDOT does not differentiate between tourists and local traffic.

Harry Reid International Airport on Tuesday reported a 6.4 percent decline in traffic to 4.5 million passengers.

While visitor volume declined for Las Vegas, it was on the increase in Laughlin and Mesquite for the month. The LVCVA reported volume of 114,000, up 9.6 percent in the Colorado River town of Laughlin, while it reached 59,000, up 7.3 percent in the golfing mecca of Mesquite.

Smaller gaming decline

While visitor volume was off in Las Vegas, statistics from the Gaming Control Board showed that it doesn’t necessarily correlate to lower gaming win for the casino industry.

Despite Clark County’s 2.9 percent decline and a statewide 2.3 percent dip, both casino win totals still hit more than $1 billion for the state’s 443 and Clark County’s 217 major casinos.

For the first quarter of the 2025-26 fiscal year, win is still ahead of the 2024-25 year and only two of the 20 submarkets monitored by the Control Board have reported winning less than they did a year ago.

Outlying Clark County markets performed better than the Strip and downtown Las Vegas for the month with the Strip down 5.5 percent to $687.8 million and downtown off 2 percent to $89.2 million.

The North Las Vegas market was flat and the Boulder Strip, Laughlin, Mesquite and outlying Clark County were all up by single-digit percentages.

The worst September performance came in Sparks, down 10.2 percent to $14.2 million.

Gaming industry analyst Daniel Politzer, of New York-based JP Morgan, said Strip slot performance was strong but offset by volatile baccarat play, which flipped unfavorably because of lower hold percentages for the game.

“Given the Strip’s soft leisure backdrop, the Strip’s stable gaming trends continue to stand out,” Politzer wrote in a Wednesday note to investors.

For the first quarter of the fiscal year, state gaming win is up 2.3 percent to $3.9 billion and Clark County, boosted by the Strip’s $2.1 billion win, is up 1.7 percent to $3.3 billion.

Clark County and the Strip continue to be the gaming workhorse for the state with the county accounting for 85 percent of the state’s win.

As of Friday, the state had collected $87 million in gaming taxes from September winnings, a 12.3 percent decline from a year ago. But collections for the quarter are still up 7.6 percent from last year to $347.2 million.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.