A creator visits Las Vegas to test claims the city is dying and finds bustling casinos, then digs into data. Visitors aged 20-30 dropped 50%, replaced by Gen X who can afford it. Spending shifted from gambling to food and experiences.
So I'm out here in Las Vegas for the weekend on a half work, half pleasure trip, and, uh, I came in really expecting something different than what I found when I kind of saw what was going on. And to give it a perspective, when I came out here, I've been reading a lot of the same stuff on social media and the news about how this place is dying, how Vegas is a place that people can't afford it anymore, especially if you're a young person. And I saw that stuff and then I got out here and started walking around when I arrived yesterday and basically like on the ground, I saw something totally different. Like things were going pretty well. I saw a lot of young people. I did see a lot of old people too. But by and large, like what I saw on the ground didn't necessarily match what I was seeing in social media and stuff like that. Put this post up right here that I saw on another Twitter account as I was flying in. Basically, the guy was talking about how nobody was checking in at the Aria, which is an MGM hotel kind of down at the other end of the Strip. Then I saw that. I was like, oh, well, yeah, Vegas must be dead. And then I went in to check in at the hotel I'm staying at, which is Treasure Island, because it's cheap and I'm cheap. Basically, like, it was packed. Like, it was taking people an hour to check into the hotel because there were just so many people. So I did what any kind of sane person should do when they see something in the world that just doesn't make sense. Right? If there's a narrative that they're hearing, and then you're looking back and saying, like, well, that doesn't match what I'm seeing on the ground. Well, then the natural place to turn is data. So I went and fired up ChatGPT, as one does, to kind of figure out what's going on, and eventually stumbled on some data that was actually interesting and also misleading. First misleading piece of data was actually one that was interesting, which was people were talking about how Vegas is not affordable for people that are young. Um, then I went and looked, and actually the average age of visitors to Vegas has been decreasing steadily year over year for the past 5 years. Most things, a stat like that can be kind of misleading. It doesn't tell you the full picture of what's really going on. So fortunately, Vegas is a pretty introspective place. They're really curious about, you know, what's going on in the market here and stuff like that. So they actually pay their Convention and Visitors Bureau to run a detailed study on all the visitors. And I'll put a link to that below. This is kind of the second lesson of this video, I think, is as business people, you can see headlines, you generally can't trust those anymore. And then secondarily, then you'll see some data that kind of seeps in, and you have to look at all of that with, well, frankly, just a really critical eye to understand if you should trust it or not. 2024 study from the convention folks and the Visitors Bureau folks here in Vegas was pretty telling. It turns out a lot of the narratives that you're hearing, they're they're not that far off, but there's nuance to them to really understand what's happening. While the average age is going down here in Vegas, it's because of a weird shift. What you're actually seeing is families that are coming in largely driven by more diverse and more ethnic families. Hispanic and Asian Americans are bringing their kids here and bringing whole families to do kind of the Vegas experience. And at its core, the classical kind of market of the Gen Z, people that are 20 to 30 right now, they are indeed not coming out here. Like, the number of visitors of that age group has gone down by 50%, and it's being replaced, well, by people of my age, Gen X, 40 to 50, who are showing up. And well, frankly, we can afford this place. This isn't a video about a detailed, nuanced look at Vegas and its future and stuff like that. It's really more of a how should you think about data and the things you hear when you own a business or you're considering investing in one. You know, it just requires looking at everything with a critical eye. And especially in this world, if you hear something, read something, you should probably just believe it's not true until you find the data and are able to prove to yourself that it is. The thing that was interesting from the data of the Visitors Bureau was just how the way people are approaching Vegas is really shifting. They care so much more about having great experiences and a lot less— well, just in terms of the classic way Vegas made money, which was blackjack and table games. Look at Vegas. What you're seeing now is just it responding to where people are wanting to spend their dollars. The young people that are coming and even the old people that are coming, like, they're just spending their time doing different stuff. Me personally, I probably will leave here without gambling a nickel, and I'm okay with that. I'm here for food and experience and, well, business in the end. So the rest of it is what it is. All right, that's it from an early morning in Vegas. Don't believe what you read, especially on YouTube videos like this one. Catch you next time. Let me know what you think in the comments below. See ya.
