What should have been Las Vegas' busiest month of the year ended up being another bust for the tourism-centric city.
According to data from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, traffic for November — Las Vegas' busiest month — was down by 9.6 percent year over year, accounting for only 4.3 million passengers.
November's numbers are actually worse than October's, when the airport reported an 8.2 percent decline in incoming passengers, according to SF GATE.
For the past two years, the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix — held the week before Thanksgiving — was a reliable draw for tourists. However, this year, another notable event occurred in the U.S. concurrently with the race—the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Due to the shutdown, air traffic was reduced because of a shortage of air traffic controllers willing to work without pay.
But Las Vegas' tourism woes began long before the shutdown. Rising prices — in part due to inflation and in part to President Donald Trump's trade wars — have caused an affordability crisis for Americans, forcing them to pinch pennies and cut back on luxuries, such as trips to gamble in Las Vegas.
Trump's hardline immigration crackdowns and inflammatory rhetoric toward the rest of the world have also contributed to a spirit of caution for foreign visitors planning to visit Las Vegas and the U.S. at large.
For example, Trump's tariffs and insinuations that he would invade Canada and make it the U.S.'s "51st state" sparked fury among Canadians, who cancelled their travel plans to the U.S. in droves.
The most significant decline in travelers to Las Vegas was reported among Canadian airlines. Air Canada traffic to Las Vegas is down 40 percent since last year.
In 2024, 28 percent of foreign tourists to the U.S. were Canadians. In 2025, that number is down to 23 percent, resulting in a $4 billion loss to the U.S. economy.
Las Vegas has been significantly affected by the decline in Canadian visitors, and Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley held a press conference at the start of September, urging them to return.
“I’m telling everybody in Canada, please come,” Berkley said at the time. “We love you, we need you, and we miss you.”
While Canadian travelers going elsewhere is a major contributor to Las Vegas' tourism woes, data suggests that tourism is down across the board.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's data, which extends through October, indicates that tourism was down 7.6 percent year over year. Hotels in the city, on average, report an 80.8 percent occupancy rate, yet even with open rooms, hotel prices remain high, with the average cost for a room on the Strip at $195 per night.
In a recent post on his website, Nate Silver, a data analyst who wrote a book on Las Vegas titled "On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything," argued that travelers to the city may be rethinking their trips because they're being squeezed for cash at every turn.
“Las Vegas is at its best when it creates a feeling of abundance. Vegas gamblers are famous for burning the candle at both ends," Silver wrote. "But if at every interface you feel put out — the rooms are overbudget, the food is expensive, and the odds you face at the tables are tilted even further against you — you might reconsider your next trip.”
The Las Vegas Review-Journal highlighted some of the high prices travelers to Las Vegas are likely to encounter during a typical visit.
“A cup of regular coffee costing $6 or $7 (after coffee makers were removed from hotel rooms), domestic beers going for $10 or more, cocktails made with well liquor being sold for $25 and up, or fast-food and soft drink combos that exceed $30 a person are just a few examples of uncomfortable price points often cited by visitors,” the paper reports.
Travelers might be willing to accept those prices if they believed the odds were fair at the city's casinos, but the Review-Journal's analysis found that this was unlikely to be the case for visitors.
“Gamblers point to less-than-favorable gaming conditions, such as 6:5 blackjack, triple-zero roulette, or $25 table game minimums during slower times of the day as reasons to avoid certain casinos,” the paper reports.
None of this is lost on the movers and shakers in Las Vegas, and some are trying to take steps to reverse course.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill said during a recent press conference that operators in the city are "aware" of the concerns surrounding prices.
“I think it’s clear that value has been a concern on the part of some of our customers,” he said. “We’re aware of that. The resorts are aware of that.”
Hill attributed the decline in tourism to a pullback in discretionary spending by Americans wary of the current state of the economy.
MGM Resorts International CEO William Hornbuckle said during a third-quarter earnings call that his company made adjustments to prices and offerings after receiving critical feedback from guests.
“Of course, that growth ebbs and flows over shorter measurements of time, and this summer, we heard from some of our guests around value in Las Vegas, and we responded by making adjustments to ensure a rationalized premium value experience across all of our properties," he said. "We also partnered with a destination on a fabulous five-day sale during which we sold over 300,000 room nights, nearly doubling our typical pace, reflecting the strong demand that exists for our experiences.”
Hornbuckle also acknowledged that prices for visitors had become excessive across the board.
"When we think about pricing and things that got everyone's attention, whether it was the infamous bottle of water or a Starbucks coffee at Excalibur that cost $12, shame on us," Hornbuckle said. "We should have been more sensitive to the overall experience at a place like Excalibur to those customers. You can't have a $29 room and a $12 coffee. We have gone through the organization — we think, we hope, we believe — and we've price corrected."
Caesars CEO Thomas Reeg said during a third-quarter earnings call that his company was "constantly adjusting" prices throughout its operation, but also defended the company's policies.
“And I don’t discount that there are areas in our business and in Las Vegas that might have gotten over their skis pricing-wise. But to put [it] in context, you know, we’re in a quarter where while we’re talking about pricing and degradation to demand, our occupancy percentage was over 90% in the quarter,” he said.
It's not all bad news for Las Vegas. A recent report from the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, projects that the city will host 40.1 million visitors in 2026, representing a 2.4 percent increase over 2025.
"The level of uncertainty in the national economy — and how businesses and consumers will make decisions based on that uncertainty — complicates projections, but at this point we don't project a recession in the near term as some of this may smooth out given time," the center's director, Andrew Woods, told Travel Weekly.
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