Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley issued a heartfelt plea to Canadian visitors this week, acknowledging the city’s tourism-dependent economy is suffering from a dramatic decline in international visitors, particularly from Canada, which represents the city’s largest international market.
“As the mayor of Las Vegas, I’m telling everybody in Canada, please come. We love you, we need you, and we miss you,” Berkley said during a press conference this week, where she addressed the multiple challenges facing the entertainment capital’s tourism industry.
The mayor’s latest comments echo concerns she first raised in an August press conference, where she painted a stark picture of the tourism decline.
“International travel is way down. People are not coming to the United States,” Berkley said last month. “’
Great yet ?
I can’t believe that threatening Canadians didn’t make them want to come to the US and spend all their money.
Las Vegas is a city built for a different era, and we’re not in that era any more. I really don’t see it re-surging, at least until Trump allows fights to the death at MGM Grand. Kinda /s.
It could come back, but it won’t be the same Vegas. They’re trying hard to pivot.
Gambling needs to take a back seat to entertainment. It’s chock full of stuff to do, the Sphere, the Dam, the canyons, the desert, family-friendly shows, Area-15, and they’re cleaning up the strip.
They just need the US to be on the menu for tourism again and that’s not going to happen with all this motions to everything going on.
“Come to Las Vegas! Win a free trip to El Salvador if you accidentally get swept up in an ICE raid!”
Fascism is unpopular.
Shocking I’m sure.
Vegas doesn’t care about anything but their money
Canadian here. Nice try, ICE.
Lol.
Did they think owning the libs was going to be free?
Must be nice winning so much they went full ouroboros. Fucking simpletons.
Good. Its working then.
I’m American, have never been to Vegas and was planning a trip. Then all my bills went up. My insurance alone tripled. I now fear traveling state to state as I don’t trust the police in red states so no driving through them. I no longer trust the TSA to not arrest me for what I post online so no more flying. I think I will stay right here for the foreseeable future as travel just isn’t important to me right now. Would I love to travel? Yes. I need to feel safe and secure in it and to not be financially ruined by it. Right now I just need to focus on making sure my housing and food is secured. I don’t have time or security to focus on anything else.
Same here. I’m much darker than my own mother and have spent a lot of time during my childhood in the 70s and 80s being asked if my parents had an “interracial marriage”, oh AND I have tattoos ( god forbid, but dark people with tattoos are seen as gang members by the current administration.) I haven’t traveled outside this country since pre-COVID and I believe the next time I’m able to afford it, I’m going somewhere that will allow me to stay permanently. The current administration terrifies and angers me, and the other side not doing anything about it has me wondering why I’m still here.
I can promise you TSA doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything besides the water bottle in your backpack. Other agencies, sure, but the TSA itself is only concerned if you’re trying to bring a prohibited item through security. Unless the FBI has tagged you as a terrorist or something they could care less.
Wrong, almost missed my flight out of Kansas recently because the guy checking IDs pulled the person I was with aside for a full search, because they looked Latina (he said he thought her ID was fake). She had to stand there for 45 minutes waiting to be searched, no one could help her or search her. Finally I pitched a white woman tantrum at another older white woman working and she got her out ASAP. Her ID and everything was fine. He was just racist and wanted to harass her because he could. What a fucker
TSA just loves to power trip. Last trip my pre check got messed up so my wife and daughter went through and got on the plane, and I got sent to the 45 minute other line. They let a handicapped person go right ahead of me and skip the line when I finally got to the front (normally okay, but now I had 10 minutes left to run to the plane for final boarding). They flagged my bag for extra checking because there were baby wipes in there, and when I asked if they could check mine first before the guy who got placed in front of me, he yelled at me that I should have been at the airport 2 hours ago and it wasn’t his problem if I missed my flight and my wife and daughter flew without me.
*couldn’t care less.
This means they are at the bottom of the care barrel and that thing is dry.
Compare “couldn’t have any less money” with “could have less money”.
Maybe today but do you think Orange Man won’t weaponize the TSA given a reason or opportunity?
They’re already so desperate to have the power of real cops, that’s a terrifying thought
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Was just in the city. Everyone was telling me how bad it got. I had a great time. Didn’t have to make a reservation for the Wynn buffet. I just walked right in. Then the Uber drivers were telling how bad things have got for them. From 15k a week to maybe 2-3K. Same thing for bartenders and waitresses.
Did you get those donuts at the buffet? Super good
But the rest is pretty sad, yeah
I’m sure this is not a rare thing on Lemmy, but even as an American sitting in the US I see these headlines and think “lol get fucked.”
Probably 100 Million people in this country need to be shocked into global reality. I worry just how bad things will have to get before that happens, though. It would be great to have an economy that would let me retire some day, sure, but the loss of institutions and technological advancement is sad for both us and for people that don’t even exist yet.
And I’m not trying to be anti entertainment / gambling / prostitution, but Vegas is pretty low on the priority list of the american institutions trump is disintegrating. It has high international visibility though.
Oh things are going to have to get a whole lot worse before a significant amount of people finally PRIVATELY admit they were wrong and start quietly doing things differently.
Realistically we’re going to see a decline in the quality of our lives probably for the rest of our lives before this ship MAYBE corrects course.
America is very, very dumb. That’s something that, even under good circumstances, would probably take a generation or two to fix. But our circumstances aren’t good and aren’t getting better.
I hate to say it, but there are a number of better places to spend your life than the U.S. as it is now and will probably be for years and years to come. It’s going to take a looooong time to rebuild what we’re losing right now.
hate to say it, but there are a number of better places to spend your life than the U.S. as it is now and will probably be for years and years to come
If only most americans knew this, it might actually self-correct!
But in a world with incredible, downright magical access to global communication and human knowledge, millions continue to choose folk wisdom and confirmation bias.
Oh I know. The only reason I’m still here is that I can’t afford to leave.
I heard mars is nice this time of year…
I think that if we don’t have civil war, the political sea change will come from Boomers dying of old age, allowing younger generations to slot into their evacuated political and fiscal offices.
And Gen Z is heavily right-leaning due to the piss-poor quality of education and all the manosphere propaganda over the last several years. It’s going to continue to get worse for a very long time before it gets better.
Don’t underestimate how stupid gen z is.
Probably 100 Million people in this country need to be shocked into global reality.
We’re not even close to that though. Things would have to get far worse in the US for that to even begin to happen . The full third of eligible voters who didn’t vote in November for the most part still wouldn’t if an election were held today.
Yeah that’s the unfortunate truth. We can argue all day long about what the best way forward is, but most people do not care unless they are actively being hurt right this moment. And that’s ignoring the fact that there is an absurd amount of enthusiastic support for Trump among our neighbors.
I think we have a situation where what used to be “middle class” paths through life, like a high school educated father working a manufacturing job to support a wife and 2.3 kids, are now the “you can probably keep yourself alive if you keep on your employers good side” working poor that feel like indentured slaves.
Filling the actual middle class slot are the highly educated and specialized workers. Like in my case, I am a single income earner for my family and we own our single family home. But, I have three degrees (two STEM) with 20 years of experience and live in a blue collar neighborhood in a house that’s older than me. And we bought the place over 15 years ago.
Then I guess the upper middle class is reserved for your medical specialists, successful business owners, and corporate drones who stumbled their way up to the c-suite.
And somehow, the government and corporations have convinced them all to punch down.
Well, what did you expect people to do when your president started questioning Canada’s sovereignty? To roll over and keep giving you money?! Get rid of the infestation of fascists all over the place, burn it all down, and then, maybe then people might think about returning to the USA.
But I do find it funny that in Youtube comments on channels like Guard The Leaf or “Not Leaving Las Vegas” there were idiots claiming that Vegas doesn’t run on income from foreign visitors, that it mostly runs on domestic tourism, despite showing them actual numbers from the Las Vegas airport.
There’s no way those people have even been to the Strip during normal times, because it is so so multicultural it’s insane.
Here is my most Canadian reaction.
Bwahahahahahaaaaa… No.
Et pour l’autre langue officielle:
Honhonhonghonhooon… Non.
Je t’ai upvoté dans les deux langues
Merci pour respecter l’autre langue!
Yup bout sums it up….
Maybe it would help if our President wasn’t threatening Canadian sovereignty, and the cult wasn’t cheering it on.
Donald Trump’s incessant goading of Canada—threatening steep tariffs, and urging it to become the 51st state was only earlier this year.
What’s your point? These declining tourism numbers aren’t from last year or something, but from this year.
Yea that’s what he’s saying.
Las Vegas is having the day Nevada voted for…
Can we please stop acting like the 2024 election results were legitimate and not a hostile corporate takeover? Every time this dumbass shit is uttered, especially about a blue state, all it does is aid the fascists in legitimizing their ill-gotten positions of power.
The results were legitimate though. Too many people didn’t bother to go out and do their civic duty. And it helped the fascists in performing their hostile takeover.
So, yes, Las Vegas is reaping what Nevada sowed.
