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Posted on 08/07/2025 8:47:22 AM PDT by Red Badger
Vegas was better when the Mafia ran it. There, we said it.
Back then, the city wasn’t a soulless corporate cash machine; it was a destination built for working-class Americans to have a good time, blow off some steam, and feel like high-rollers for a weekend. The Mafia understood their customers because they were their customers. They knew you didn’t nickel-and-dime a guy on his way to the blackjack table. You gave him cheap rooms, free drinks, affordable and abundant buffets, and enough glitz to make him feel like a big shot for a few days. The real money came from the action inside the casino, and they knew how to keep you coming back for more.
But corporate-run Vegas doesn’t operate that way. Once the stuffy suits took over, the city shifted from hospitality to exploitation. Everything became about maximizing shareholder value instead of giving Joe Blow an unforgettable weekend. Now, in 2025, Vegas is pushing resort fees, paid parking, $30 cocktails, $100 show tickets, inflated table minimums, and slot machines tightened to the point of absurdity. Now, every little thing bleeds you dry before you ever get a chance to feel like a big shot and enjoy yourself. And for the working-class crowd that once made the heart of Vegas tick, those days are long gone. Vegas today is designed to Hoover your wallet dry while giving you less in return.
The old Mob-run Vegas wasn’t perfect, and we’re not trying to glorify organized crime, but they knew the golden rule: keep the customer happy and they’ll keep coming back. The Mob cared about loyalty. They wanted you to leave feeling like you had a great time, even if you lost your shirt. Corporate Vegas doesn’t care if you ever come back. They just want to squeeze every last dime out of you while you’re there. And the result of that soulless mindset is a city that once had character and charm but now has become a sterile, overpriced, corporate strip mall with neon lights.
BroBible:
Las Vegas is dying. Fewer and fewer people are willing to spend a small fortune to visit a tourist destination that seems to get more and more expensive by the day, if not the hour.
Meanwhile, the city itself continues to ignore reality!
Blame is placed on others. Las Vegas chooses not to look internally.
Hotel occupancy rates dropped 14.6% year over year in the month of June. They were down 12.3% through the first 19 days of July.
MGM made major cuts at many of its top properties in May after tourism numbers saw a steep decline in April. Casinos were panicking in February because the gambling-focused city was empty during the Super Bowl, so hotel rooms on The Strip were selling for pennies. Resorts World specifically saw an astonishing 75% dip in revenue during the first quarter.
All of this goes to say that Las Vegas might be in trouble. The city is dying.
Cost goes up, interest goes down. A large part of the recent decline stems from the indefinite increase in price. Everything, everywhere costs more today than it did just five years ago. Duh.
That is even more true in Las Vegas!
Gone are the days of cheap buffets, free drinks, low buy-ins at the card tables and shows that are affordable. That doesn’t even include resort fees, valet, hotel accommodations, etc.
To deny the correlation between the high costs of Las Vegas and the ongoing tourism slump would be silly. People can’t afford to play as many $25 games of Blackjack compared to $5. Nobody wants to pay $17 for a smoothie or $9 for coffee.
But forget reality and actual facts. The left is so desperate to spin Vegas’s decline into an anti-Trump narrative, they’re now blaming him for a slump in tourism years after he left office.
Even The Daily Mail wasted no time cranking out this lazy clickbait take, complete with the claim that international visitors are shunning Vegas “because of Trump.”
One of the reasons Sin City’s businesses are hurting is because international visitors have continued to shun the US – including some upset over the presidency of Donald Trump.
Las Vegas welcomed 3.39 million visitors in March, down almost eight percent from 3.68million in February, according to a report by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Hotels were 82.9 percent full the same month, compared with 85.3 percent full in March 2024. Midweek occupancy recorded a decline of 2.5 percent in the same period, despite more than half a million people attending conferences there.
But after getting their anti-Trump TDS headline out of the way, the Daily Mail actually pointed to the real problem, and it has nothing to do with politics. Vegas has priced out the very people who kept it alive, and now the Strip is buried under sky-high costs and a homeless/drug crisis. The Daily Mail piece goes on:
Another reason tourists might be skipping the Strip is its high prices. A visitor recently shared her shock after she was charged $26 for a bottle of Fiji water from the minibar in her room at the Aria Resort & Casino.
And a British magician was left outraged after he was billed $74.31 for two drinks at Sphere in Las Vegas. A 2024 study found that the average income of Las Vegas holidaymakers is now $93,000, with many budget travelers priced out of the gambling capital.
Homelessness in Las Vegas has also exploded, with a conservative estimate of around 8,000 people unhoused across a city of just over half a million. Walk along the busy Las Vegas Boulevard at any time of day and you will see people who are clearly homeless and often under the influence of drugs.
None of this is President Trump’s fault.
The high prices are so out of control that everyone’s competing to find the most outrageous prices in Vegas and posting about it.
That doesn’t sound like a “recipe” for tourism success.
The Telegraph:
In June, a humble bottle of water briefly became a social media sensation, when one stunned traveler revealed that it had been priced at a shocking $26 in the mini-bar at the iconic Bellagio hotel. The story was picked up across the American media.
On the popular discussion website Reddit, meanwhile, forums about Las Vegas have descended into a strange game of Top Trumps, with users competing to see who can find the most excessive examples of Vegas pricing during their visit. “I paid $14 for a bottle of Sprite and $32 for chicken tenders,” posted one user, sounding strangely proud about the whole experience.
The corporations running Las Vegas are working overtime to claw back everything they lost during the so-called “pandemic,” and they’re doing it by sticking it to their customers. The Telegraph piece goes on:
the data shows that prices have jumped disproportionately since the pandemic, with a 50 per cent rise in the average hotel room price since 2019. Fees and charges have also spiked, as casinos seek to make up for lost revenues during the shutdown.
Many experts insist the “Vegas is dying” talk is way overblown. Summer has never been peak season for Sin City; it’s too hot. Also, the city has a history of dipping, rebranding, and roaring back.
That’s all well and good, but if Vegas doesn’t return to its hospitality roots and instead keeps trying to morph into a cold, sterile, American version of Dubai, it’s likely headed for a rude awakening.
Vegas was built on the backs of hardworking Americans looking for an unforgettable weekend, not the overpriced, corporate shell we’re stuck with now.
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My wife and I drove through on our honeymoon back in 1998. We were so tired we literally slept on the grass between the sidewalk and the side of a building while people walked by.
Then we got in the car, filled the tank, and left. There was nothing for us there.
illegals forcibly handing out pornos on every corner, no free drinks, charging an arm and a leg for everything, ghetto thugs and meth heads everywhere, salesmen and timeshare creeps everywhere, gee what’s not to like about vegas?
Such a shame what happened to it.
I do really like the movie, Casino. Even though it’s protagonist is an ignorant political hack in real life.
Get rid of the Saudi owners and bring back the mafia
It’s sad to read about this; I haven’t gone for a long time but reports from my family are very bad. In the mid to late 80’s, it was good cheap food and fun. Today, you can’t even blow a fart there without being charged something for it.
Yes, supposedly it is a true story...................
Good article. Just on principle, the resort fee thing makes me gnash my teeth. When I was there last year many hotels were charging $25 to have a refrigerator in the room
Vegas cares about the guy and his mistress who puts 150k in the cage. They no longer care about the ordinary person. This means in 20 years Vegas would be down to two or three casinos. The rest will be imploded and prepared for section 8 housing.
Wife and I had good times in Vegas.
Started going there in 1993.
The last time we went was 2009.
It had changed for the worse by then.
Look at the I-15 traffic from southern California; it’s no longer a 200-mile traffic jam Friday-Sunday. Primm has largely shut down, save one hotel and gas station.
That’s a big danger sign for Las Vegas.
Wait until Havana re-opens and casinos become legal in Hawaii.
Who wants the desert when you’ve got the beach?
I’m glad I got to see it before it went to Trash City. Was there in 1974, while in the Marines, stayed with relatives and rode my motorcycle all over.
Streets were clean, crime was low and everybody felt safe.............
The old Las Vegas is gone. Back in the day in Italian-American neighborhoods when a young man was starting to get in trouble there was not an uncommon solution. The boy was sent to Las Vegas to work with a relative or close friend to learn dicipline and the casino business. Personally knew two guys who had this happen and both did very well. They still lead non criminal productive lives with families of their own. That theme was explored in the Godfather movie and novel.
And any problems were rubbed-out, stuffed in a 55 gallon steel drum, and dropped to the bottom of Lake Mead!
“I do really like the movie, Casino.”
Well, duh-niro spoke the absolute truth at the very beginning of that movie......”we are here for one reason, to take your money”
I found this documentary very interesting and confirms casinos don’t want people to win big evrn if it’s done legally.
Inside the Edge: A Professional Blackjack Adventure
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3575954/
They can’t write about online gambling because that would give away that this decline isn’t temporary.
“But in the end, we f___ed it all up. It should have been so sweet too. But it turned out to be the last time that street guys like us were ever given anything that f___ing valuable again.”
That’s a fact, Jack!......................
In 1974 when I was there a couple times, it was a clean and an safe place.
Ironically, when the Mob ran it there was no street crime or very little. If a pick-pocket plied his trade there, he would be arrested, beat the hell out of him and dumped at the city limits. Message: Don’t come back.................
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