Technology is advancing at the speed of light as newly developed technologies lead to other discoveries, and problems inherent in discoveries lead to the development of technology-based solutions. There’s a bewildering array of new out there, all of it with the potential to help or harm, depending on its use, and the humans using it.
Nevada has more than 300 named mountain ranges, alpine and desert regions, more than 300 days of sunshine and more public land than any other U.S. state. Southern Nevada is the entertainment capital of the world, and on its way to being the sporting events capital as well. Northern Nevada is home to Lake Tahoe and many and varied opportunities for outdoor recreation. Visitors thrive in Nevada.Nevada thrives because of visitors.
Even as Nevada’s economy diversifies, tourism and the hospitality industry remain a top economic driver in the state.
Synonymous with Tourism
Tourism is important to Nevada. “We tend to take it for granted because it’s been such a staple of such importance. The news is always talking about lithium mines, and mining in other elements, so we tend to forget that the number one industry and generator of revenue for our state is still tourism,” said Rafael Villanueva, CEO, Travel Nevada.
Because tourism is an economic driver for Nevada, when there’s a slowdown in the industry, it affects government and residents alike, even if locals aren’t aware of the slowdown. “The state is in pretty good financial shape,” said Steve Hill, president & CEO, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA). “This isn’t a crisis drop like we’ve seen at other times, but revenue will be down because tourism is down.”
Southern Nevada is experiencing a slowdown in tourism in the second half of 2025. Northern Nevada is holding its own. Three months into the fiscal year that started in July, the anticipated 3.6 percent forecasted deficit wasn’t in sight; the the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority (RSCVA) exceeded its budget each month. “It’s very early, but when you look at the prior year, FY24 was a very strong year in terms of all the segments we keep track of,” said Mike Larragueta, president & CEO, RSCVA. “We are a little bit off to prior year, but when you actually look at the budget, we exceeded budget in most, if not all, categories for FY25 versus 24. We’re not experiencing what is happening in southern Nevada, at least not in the last few months.”
What’s happening in southern Nevada is that tourism numbers have declined. Preliminary data from July 2025 shows visitor volume down in Las Vegas by 12 percent from July 2024. Fewer travelers are coming from Canada and Mexico. Visitation from Europe is down, and so is domestic travel. Whether it’s due to tariffs, an uncertain economy, higher costs or an unpromising jobs market with unemployment edging up, isn’t certain.
It could be all those things. “At its core,” explained Hill, “it’s consumer sentiment, consumer confidence, one of those relates to financial condition and the other relates to job prospects, and they’re obviously closely very related. Uncertainty is causing more of the population than we have seen recently to be concerned about their financial outlook and causing them to pause some travel plans. Las Vegas in particular is a very discretionary travel location in comparison to most others. We are very reliant on the industry, which has a very early and larger impact on our city than on most others.”
“If you think about the machine of Las Vegas as southern Nevada, if they drop [in numbers], so does the whole state. Because about 80 percent of revenue that is driven to the state of Nevada from tourism comes from southern Nevada,” said Villanueva.
Leisure visitation is down. Travel from Europe, especially Germany, is down 7.4 percent. Travel from Canada and Mexico is down. In southern Nevada there’s still substantial access to flights from the UK through British Airways, Virgin and U.S. carriers.
Group travel – corporate events, group and association meetings, sports event travel – is up slightly, 7 or 8 percent in southern Nevada in the first part of 2025. Moving into the rest of the year and 2026, group business looks strong, Hill confirmed.
Tourism Types
In northern Nevada, the first 60 days of the fiscal year shows leads for booking group travel up 15 percent from the previous year.
Group, meeting or corporate travel is a significant bonus to a city’s economy, especially in off season, like reaching Reno in winter, or Vegas during its slowdown in winter months. Having groups booked then means booked room nights, possibly for longer than the event as attendees come early or stay late to enjoy leisure activities. Visitor authorities aggressively market the idea, Larragueta said, and hotels often offer attendees discounts or added values to extend their stay.
But group travel isn’t an accurate indicator of tourism numbers, because those events are planned anywhere from two to five years in advance, said Larragueta. “It doesn’t really speak to what’s happening today.”
On the other hand, they’re still coming, and the event is going off as planned; that’s a positive indicator. In northern Nevada that segment represents between 15 and 18 percent of tourism hotel mix. Leisure is the largest segment, with third party operators like Expedia and Booking.com making up 50 percent of the hotel mix.
There’s increased interest in the Reno-Tahoe area from both business and leisure travelers. Numbers are up slightly, 1.2 percent. That may be because northern Nevada is an easy drive-to destination for northern California, and southern Nevada has more visitors traveling via air, despite substantial numbers that drive from southern California. Reno-Tahoe International Airport is beefing up access for visitors by increasing flights from Chicago and Atlanta.
“Over 50 percent of [northern Nevada] visitation comes from California,” said Larragueta. There’s the attraction of no cost and low-cost outdoor recreation, hiking, biking, sightseeing, activities along the Truckee River, and being at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Outdoor recreation drives more revenue to the state than gaming does outside Washoe and Clark counties.
Tourism authorities have doubled down and created campaigns about enjoying Nevada’s outdoors.
The hospitality industry is geared to work with group tourism. Lodging taxes support schools and funnel into the general fund. Groups often generate extensive food and beverage taxes for the state. Group travel hasn’t reset to pre-pandemic numbers yet, but the tourism industry is working on it.
Leagues of Their Own
Bringing professional sports to the state has been a major selling point for Nevada tourism. Las Vegas, already the entertainment capital of the world, is becoming the professional sports capital of the world. In June 2016, the Golden Knights became the first major professional sports franchise to locate in Nevada. The Raiders moved to Las Vegas in January 2020. Allegiant Stadium opened halfway through that same year. In 2022, Vegas hosted the NFL draft. And, in November 2023, Formula 1 racing returned with the Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix. Back in 1981, F1 raced in southern Nevada, but the Caesars Palace parking lot venue was nothing like today’s bright lights course that runs through the Las Vegas Strip.
“Las Vegas wanted Formula 1 because it was a time when the city was really leaning into sporting events, professional sports being a very popular offering for attracting tourism,” said Lori Nelson-Kraft, senior vice president, corporate affairs, Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. The timing was right: the opening of Allegiant Stadium brought attention to southern Nevada as a venue for professional sports.
It opened doors for marquee sporting events, added Nelson-Kraft, events that brought in luxury travelers who stay longer and spend more. For Vegas it was the opportunity to grow visitation. For F1, it was the opportunity to bring the world’s favorite motorsport to the world’s top travel destination. “You have cars racing around what is a 3.8-mile track but under the brilliant, beautiful lights of the Las Vegas Strip,” Nelson-Kraft said.
F1 in Vegas means more exposure on the international front and growing domestic travel numbers. It helps fill southern Nevada’s 150,000 hotel rooms in November, typically offseason.
The Local Benefit
Tourism isn’t necessarily all gaming; it’s money that travelers from inside or out of state leave behind for lodging, food, transportation, events.
“We’ve found that everybody in the state understands and values tourism. They’re just not necessarily open to tourists,” explained Villanueva.
Regardless of their sentiment, residents benefit from tourism. Because of tourism, restaurants stay open longer and are less expensive than elsewhere, and there are more of them. Attractions that draw visitors are available to locals all the time, from outdoor adventures to world class entertainment.
“Also, the tax base that tourism brings in general for the state of Nevada [is a boon],” said Villanueva. “A household saves about $5,200 (a year) in taxes they would pay if they were in another state. That is generated through the lodging tax the visitors leave, the sales tax that visitors have or the entertainment tax. It gives us a little bit of better lifestyle than we would have if we lived in other states, or at least we don’t have to pay for that lifestyle.”
And, tourism isn’t only visitors from out of state. Metro areas at both ends of the state are generators for economic impact from visitors, but there’s so much more to see outside of the bright lights. Data shows that southern Nevada residents tend to travel east and west, when they could head north to see their own state. Residents in northern Nevada are more likely to visit rural communities and seek outdoor entertainment. Proximity probably has something to do with it, said Villanueva. “They’re willing to go all the way down to Tonopah. Reno is the number one driver of visitors to most neighboring rural communities.” Tourism dollars from residents also bolster the economy in rural Nevada.
Under the Rural Sun
Reno and Las Vegas obviously attract visitors. Southern Nevada has 150,000 hotel rooms to serve them. But rural Nevada is American West personified; it’s a little harder to access, a little less known. Destination development for rural communities means getting the word out to travelers.
Travel Nevada has a $1.5 million budget for working with rural communities, creating and augmenting marketing programs. Working with two or three communities at a time, consultants and experts on tourism are brought in to work with the community and create a strategic plan for the next five to 10 years. “We go out that far because we want our communities to think as far out as possible and open up opportunities,” said Villanueva.
The process takes about eight months and requires a steering committee meeting including, not just agencies connected to tourism, but small business owners, city leaders and community members to work with the consultants. “They’re also responsible for having community meetings where they go out and explain and show what they’re hoping to do,” said Villanueva. “We believe that none of these programs, especially in rural communities will work without the community behind it, the people who live there, the people who work in the hotels and restaurants and all the places they’ll see the visitors.”
Once the strategic plan is in place, there’s a request for grant dollars for the first two or three years of that plan. Successful programs have started in Black Rock, White Pine and Tonopah, and in what state leadership is calling the cultural corridor through Virginia City, Carson City and Carson Valley. The next cohort will include Goldfield and Mesquite.
Found in Translation: Spreading the Tourism Word
Nevada’s marketing efforts are always on. That means getting the word out through digital and social media, through events, through corporate meetings and conventions and even through conventions that bring groups to Nevada that book other groups to the state.
RSCVA reaches out to group travel with advertising and marketing components through periodicals and websites, and the PR side celebrates successes and lets the world know what’s happening. But the biggest asset for the convention authorities are teams in other states aggressively marketing Nevada to group travel planners.
A separate team scouts sports groups, like winter track meets on Reno’s new indoor track. In February that feature produced 13,000 room nights with an economic impact of $6 million in hard-to-schedule northern Nevada winter months. It’s expected to double the impact in 2026.
And the phone still rings. Meeting and event planners reach out to convention authorities. Sometimes the event itself is an opportunity to book more events. Every October a gathering of international meeting planners happens in southern Nevada, bringing meeting planning together with destinations that are happy to host and show everything their destination offers. In January 2026 the American Bus Association will meet in Reno for the first time on the West Coast. That’s a winter event to fill room nights and the potential to book motorcoach tours.
The tourism industry gets the word out through earned and paid media, like the 37,000 media stories that Formula 1 created in its second year of events in Nevada.
There are also events within events, like an old west saloon at the Modelo tailgate zone at a September Raiders game at Allegiant Stadium, a reminder to anyone considering travel within the state of the western lifestyle to be explored.
Tourism authorities work with third party operators like Expedia and Booking.com to guide visitors in making the most of travel to Nevada. For rural communities, Travel Nevada makes it possible for them to stretch their advertising dollars and co-op with the agency, getting exposure with third-party listings and other media. Working with third-party operators also provides feedback metrics on how well marketing efforts are working and whether they’re driving visitors to Nevada communities.
“We’re not stopping our initiatives in Canada, Mexico and the UK, with Canada being down anywhere from 17 to 23 percent [and] still the number one international driver for visitors to the state,” said Villanueva. “We need to still be in the market, focused and working with the operators in the country to go and support them and have a direct connection to the people who buy their product. The same thing with Mexico, the same thing with the UK, which I think is going to be very, very important to us.”
“People come to Nevada for any number of reasons,” said Hill. “Sometimes it’s for something specific, the rise in sports, or the events at Allegiant Stadium or the Sphere drives people – more often than used to be the case for some exact specific events. But generally, just the experience that is Las Vegas is something you just can’t find anywhere else, particularly the way you can experience so much in a short period of time. We’re compact. We offer a broad range of experiences you can do in three or four things that are headlines, bucket list things in a day. That’s not something you can get anyplace else.”
