That catchy ad line that for years lured people to ‘Sin City’ with the promise that no one back home would know what they had done almost begs the question, “what DO people do in Vegas.”
And now there are some more precise answers.
No, not how many people wake up drunk and unexpectedly married as Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz did in the 2008 move of that name, but information more useful to the city’s biggest industry. The info comes in the annual Las Vegas Visitor Profile, compiled for the Convention and Visitors Authority, although last year was skipped; presumably nothing happened in Vegas in 2020.
So to the details! A younger crowd is arriving; the average age in 2021 was 43.2 years compared to 46.2 in 2019. Of course, that also includes both hordes of kids and hordes of seniors; there may not be all that many actual 43.2-year-olds in town.
And, among those who gamble, there’s no clear pattern in their gambling budgets, which have fluctuated from $619 in 2016 to $591 in 2019 and $717 in 2021. But keep in mind that the 2016 figure, adjusted for inflation, is about the same as last year’s number. But the gamblers have been working harder; in 2018, they labored an average of 2.2 hours a day over hot tables, which rose to 2.7 hours in 2019 and hit three hours a day in 2021.
According to Toni Repetti, a professor at the College of Hospitality: “It looks like they’re spending more as they game. But they’re spending more time gambling, so on a per-hour basis, they’re not as big of gamblers. They’re still gambling, [but] it’s just a different type of customer.” Parse that, and you may have won a jackpot. Or not.
Other figures from the survey:
- Fewer high rollers and international visitors, likely pandemic-related
- Higher average spend for food and shopping, reflecting higher prices overall
- Greater diversity: Non-white visitors made up 44% in 2021 compared to 23% in 2019
- 60% of visitors came from the western U.S., with 26% from Southern California
