The author does a good job trying to find nuanced reasons behind the slump, but it's certainly just the money. The prices at every step of the process are exorbitant. The food is not worth the price you pay, end of story. And the table minimums are so high that you don't have time to really settle in and get into that feedback loop described in the article, where you sit there for hours and soak up "free" drinks and make friends. In my case, the one time I went to Vegas I dropped a hundred on craps and played as carefully as possible, and I was out after 15 minutes. There's only so much you can do when a single bet is $25. The casino got my money efficiently, but they didn't help me generate the positive memories that would convince me to become a repeat customer. Apparently their profits are up, but it feels like a squeeze born from short-term thinking that's going to blow up in their faces eventually.

I was out there for a rock climbing trip a few weeks ago (didn't manage to set a foot inside a casino).

The taxes on nearly everything are also exorbitant, on top of the inflated prices for everything in the city.

We won't be going back, and it's unlikely they'll ever be able to retreat from both the high taxes and inflation.

As someone outside the US, I think the cost of Las Vegas is only a small aspect of the slump. When you factor in the cost of flights and other destinations you may be visiting, Vegas being expensive is often only driving up the total trip cost proportionately.

There have been several situations in the last 12 months where the desire to go to the US (and Vegas, in this case, for conferences) just isn't there, as we are hearing so many terrible stories about travellers being harassed or unwelcome when trying to enter the US, due to the current Government. Anecdotally, this has been the reason I've heard from Canadians who are also considering travel to the same conferences.

> we are hearing so many terrible stories about travellers being harassed or unwelcome when trying to enter the US

There have been a few stories like that, but that is not a new thing. The US has been horrible to incoming tourists for a long time. You get treated like a criminal just for wanting to visit. I've got a few of stories of my own like that, going back decades.

Chalk this up to revulsion with the US president and his actions, across approximately the rest of the world.

It's a good article. The long term problem is that Vegas went too upscale and now has priced out a huge swath of the market. The immediate term problem is that the U.S. has frightened away foreign tourists, especially from Canada.

I’ll save you a click “Canadians, historically one of the city’s most reliable sources of degenerates, have effectively vanished.”

The very year we declared a trade war with all our friends they stopped coming by to visit!

The only surprising thing here is that anyone is surprised.

Trump wasnt satisfied bankrupting his own casinos, he's determined to bankrupt the entire city.

Walter, this content is hard-paywalled; please post a workaround.

I had to clear a "We need to talk about your ad blocker" notice, after which it let me read the whole thing (without turning off my ad blocker).

Strange, it isn't for me.

Weird, it told me I had to sign up for Slate Plus, and I don't have an adblocker.