Las Vegas resorts are losing customers. Are resort fees to blame?

As summer vacation time melts into the fall, only one property — Resorts World Las Vegas — has removed fees as well as temporarily ended charges for parking. And that resort isn’t saying whether the fee removal has done it any good.

Blum, CEO of EIG Inc., doing business as Escalante Inc., a travel consultant offering personalized inbound U.S. destination services for clients of the international tour and travel trade, suggested a broad moratorium to capture the attention of consumers who are convinced that Las Vegas isn’t the value it once was.

But she and some of her tourism industry colleagues haven’t been able to convince the city’s major resorts to back away from their current pricing strategies.

The end result is that visitor volume is down 8 percent this year from 2024, and in the first seven months of this year, there wasn’t a single month with a higher total than a year earlier. July’s 12 percent downturn in visitation was the second straight double-digit percentage decrease.

MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment, the largest casino-hotel operators on the Strip, didn’t respond to requests for comment on resort fees, which generally run between $35 and $55 a night.

July numbers

July’s visitation statistics released Friday were no better than they’ve been the previous six months.

Other tourism indicators also have been down earlier this year.

Room occupancy rates are off 7.6 percentage points to 76.1 percent, according to the LVCVA. The average daily room rate is down 3.4 percent to $155. Passenger traffic at Harry Reid International Airport is off 4.4 percent and has been down every month since January. Revenue per available room, a profitability gauge that takes gaming and nongaming revenue into account, is down 8.5 percent.

The only signs of life among tourism indicators are convention visitation, up 2.1 percent to 3.5 million people, and Clark County gaming win, up 0.6 percent.

The Nevada Department of Transportation said traffic on the major highways leading to Las Vegas was up 1.1 percent to an average 131,691 vehicles a day, but traffic at the California-Nevada border on Interstate 15 was off 2.8 percent to 42,501 daily vehicles.

In second-quarter casino company earnings calls in the past few weeks, the general consensus among executives is that the summer months will remain sluggish, but that visitation will pick up in the fall and advanced bookings indicate a rebound in 2026.

But Blum and her colleagues would prefer the resorts take a more proactive approach.

Leora Azoulay, president of Incentives by Design Inc., in Las Vegas, lays the blame on resort executives who won’t budge on price points as consumers complain about high prices for everything from hotel rooms to a cup of coffee.

Perceived overpricing

“There are several of us in the industry that are very supportive of getting some kind of moratorium on resort fees,” Azoulay said in an interview. “Anything that we can get the people to come back is important right now because right now there is at least a perception that we’re overpricing people.”

But executives in earnings calls are steadfast in their belief that the last thing they want to do is let room rates slide.

But Azoulay believes what resorts are doing goes beyond keeping room rates steady — she thinks customers are being gouged.

“We can all remember back to the old days of Vegas when you went to Circus Circus for the $1.99 buffet,” she said. “I don’t think any of us are expecting that again. But they’ve got to stop the gouging. We see and read that Vegas is struggling right now and that tourism is way down. I know there’s a political aspect to it, but the fact is the people are burned out and every time they raise the resort fee, there seems to be less service offered in return.”

The political angle she was referring to involves tariff policies and President Donald Trump’s references to making Canada the 51st U.S. state. Visitation from Canada has plummeted in the wake of his remarks.

Azoulay said the resort fee presumably pays for bottles of water, daily newspapers, the ability to print a boarding pass, access to hotel gyms, pools and the internet.

“For my clients, the only thing they really need is the WiFi access,” she said. “So are they saying if I don’t pay the resort fee that they’re going to deny me access to the pool? Give me a break. It’s so absurd and it annoys me to the core.”

Lower level of service

Lena Napoleone, general manager of New York-based Gastaldi USA Inc., a boutique tour operator that builds customized travel itineraries, particularly for European visitors, concurs with Azoulay that price increases are not matching the level of service provided to guests.

Napoleone said one of her biggest problems is explaining to her foreign clients exactly what a resort fee pays for when they’re charged.

“Hotels across the United States started adding these ridiculous charges as a resort fee. One of the things they added was free local calls. An international traveler doesn’t care about local calls. So it’s kind of an insult,” she said.

She also said the level of service has not kept up with the pricing, adding that the level of cleanliness in Las Vegas hotel rooms “is at an all-time low.”

Blum and her tourism colleagues are expected to consider what they can do next to encourage changes that could jump-start visitation.

Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission established new rules that require ticket sellers and resort companies to provide full disclosure of all fees associated with a transaction.

While the new FTC rule, implemented in May, doesn’t eliminate resort fees, it does require resorts and third-party room sellers to disclose total prices when making a transaction, inclusive of resort fees.

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