LAS VEGAS, Feb 19 (Reuters) – On Fridays, it still feels like peak Vegas — rolling suitcases, packed rideshare queues and the familiar churn at Harry Reid International. By Monday, the airport has quieted considerably.
“Our peaks are still peaks, and our valleys are softer,” said James Chrisley, director of the Clark County Aviation Department.
The softening is showing up in hotel pricing, flight schedules and paychecks — echoing what the Federal Reserve’s survey and recent airline earnings calls have flagged: Higher-income travelers keep booking, while households feeling the pinch pull back.
With the top 10% of earners driving consumer spending, economists warn recession risks can rise if affluent, market-linked spending suddenly cools.
Nowhere is that divide clearer than in Las Vegas, a city powered by leisure spending that just posted its sharpest annual visitor decline outside the pandemic.
Las Vegas drew about 3.1 million fewer visitors in 2025, a 7.5% drop — its sharpest decline outside the pandemic since record-keeping began in 1970, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The agency does not break down its visitation figures by domestic versus international travelers.
Passenger traffic in 2025 fell about 6% at Harry Reid, served by carriers like American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Allegiant. December traffic, typically buoyed by holiday travel, fell 10.3%.
Conventions are holding up; the weakness is leisure — the city’s lifeblood.
“I think this is more of a microcosm of where the American consumer is than necessarily telling us where the American economy is going,” said Andrew Woods, who heads the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada.
Woods said other big vacation spots — like Honolulu, Orlando, Fla. and Disneyland — aren’t seeing the same downward trend in visitors as Las Vegas, adding that the city’s high prices and fees have made it especially vulnerable as budget-conscious travelers pull back.
Officials and executives also said Las Vegas is coming off two straight record years and is now settling into a more balanced market.
MIDWEEK FADE
The shift is most visible in the middle of the week.
Weekdays are when hotels build steady volume — rooms that cover payrolls and keep restaurants and casino floors moving. When that demand softens, hotels can backfill with promotions, but they usually lower prices or add perks to do it.
From Monday to Thursday, the Las Vegas Strip looks different: Self-parking garages thin out at resorts that overflow on weekends, while valet lanes keep moving. Location data from Placer.ai suggests the Strip has tilted toward weekends.
Officials, analysts, workers and visitors cited a mix of political unease and more cautious travel plans. Fernanda Loiza, a tourist from Guatemala, said some travelers may be staying away because of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has ensnared tourists in some high-profile cases. Some people, Loiza said, are afraid of “coming and openly and freely enjoying Las Vegas.”
International visitors matter disproportionately because they typically stay longer and spend more.
Tour guide Michael Hillman said travelers are bristling at how pricey Las Vegas has become. “Ten bucks for a bottle of water,” he said. “People don’t see a deal anymore.”
HOTELS DISCOUNT, AIRLINES PULL BACK
MGM Resorts this month said revenue and earnings at its Las Vegas resorts fell in the fourth quarter and in 2025, citing outsized weakness at value-oriented properties such as Luxor and Excalibur, even as executives said trends were improving into 2026.
Caesars Entertainment reported on Tuesday that profit and revenue fell at its Las Vegas segment in the quarter ending in December and in all of 2025. For the full year, profit was down about 20% year-on-year, on roughly a 5% decline in revenue.
Strip hotels have leaned on seasonal offers and dining credits since late 2025, sometimes adding perks to hold demand. CoStar Group data shows midweek revenue per available room fell about 11% in 2025.
“Las Vegas remains a predominantly leisure-driven hotel market,” said Michael Stathokostopoulos, a senior market analyst at CoStar. Inflation and economic uncertainty, he said, are pushing travelers to skip trips, shorten stays or trade down.
Airlines have trimmed schedules as demand has softened. Cirium data shows U.S. carriers have about 7% fewer seats scheduled into Las Vegas for the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier.
International traffic shows a similar trend, particularly from Canada, a key overseas market. Major Canadian carriers have cut capacity for the quarter by about 30%. The pullback comes as some Canadians have shown greater reluctance to travel to the U.S. amid political tensions, including fallout from U.S. tariffs and immigration-related policies.
WORKERS FEEL IT FIRST
Economists say years of add-on fees and higher prices have left travelers feeling they pay more for less — a model that’s harder to sustain as inflation weighs on budgets.
Recent Federal data underscores the squeeze: Las Vegas wages remain below the national average, while local inflation and unemployment are higher.
On the Strip, that shows up in tips and hours. Joe Spica, a bellman at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and a Culinary Workers Union shop steward, said visitor totals may not have collapsed, but spending has. “They’re not tipping as much,” he said.
For Spica, a father of three, the impact is immediate. “Tips have gone ridiculously down,” he said. “And then when I go to the grocery store, every single thing I buy has somehow gone up.”
Extra shifts at hotels and restaurants have begun to disappear. That’s how slowdowns start, said Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226: not with big layoffs, but with vanishing hours that hit part-timers and on-call staff first.
Economists say the next test comes this spring, as households book summer travel. One early gauge will be drive-in traffic from Southern California, a key feeder market.
For some job seekers, the slowdown is already stark. Shuang Woo, 26, said she has struggled to land interviews and received a string of automated rejections. She recently enrolled in training to become a casino dealer.
“It’s been really tough,” she said. “The entire city runs on tourism.”
(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Ethan Smith)
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