25 Fruitless Nougats From the New Las Vegas Visitor Profile Survey
The 2023 Las Vegas Visitor Profile Study is out.
As always, the survey from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority provides interesting (if not always scientific) insights into the nature of Las Vegas visitors.
Yes, this survey is reliably unreliable, but it’s all we’ve got, so just go with it. Oh, and in case you were wondering, our band in high school was called The Fruitless Nougats.
To save you a metric ass-ton of time, we’ve extracted 25 useless items from the survey, making it easy for you to mansplain Las Vegas to everyone at your next dinner party. Just kidding, since the pandemic, people don’t host dinner parties. Well, we haven’t been invited to any. Wait a damn minute. If you’ve been having dinner parties without us, you are no longer invited to read our blog. Good luck finding 69 jokes in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Anyway, the survey!
First, some housekeeping related to the survey’s methodology. “Through 2021 the report was based on ongoing intercept surveys of travelers to Las Vegas. Beginning in 2022 an online component was added to reach a broader cross-section of visitors to Las Vegas.”
According to the LVCVA, 5,411 interviews were conducted over the course of 2023, online and off. That might not sound like a lot given there were about 39 million visitors in 2023, but it’s considered statistically representative of all those visitors.
The LVCVA’s primary audience for its survey is casinos, their bosses, although the LVCVA is paid for by room taxes, so we taxpayers are their bosses, technically.
Let’s go, as the kids say. Actually, the “Let’s go!” (sometimes including an f-bomb) trend is so annoying, isn’t it? It’s replaced “Winner, winner, chicken dinner” in Las Vegas casinos. This should’ve been in the survey: “Can you seriously not come up with something more creative to shout when the dealer busts?” Please do better, everyone.
1. First time visitor numbers were down from 2022 to 2023. Sixteen percent of visitors were virgins, compared to 24% in 2022 and 20% in 2021. There goes our theory the LVCVA tweaks the numbers to make them look better.
2. The average number of visits to Las Vegas is 2.2 times a year. A .2 visit is one where you arrive, get deathly ill from drinking and sleep the entire rest of your visit.
3. People who visit Las Vegas more often than the average are more active in social media. That’s because whatever batshit crazy things happen in Las Vegas, they’re nowhere near the level of crazy in social media.
4. Just 8% of Las Vegas visitors say they visit to gamble. Then again, 48% visit for “vacation/pleasure.” Same difference. Nearly as many people (75% of repondents) say they visit Las Vegas for conventions as come to gamble. Weirdos.
5. Half the people who said they visited Las Vegas for a special occasion were here to get shit-faced and wear a sash saying, “It’s my birthday!” to help beg for free drinks from strangers and bartenders.
6. More than half of Las Vegas visitors arrived via ground transportation, up from 49% in 2022.
7. The survey says 1% of visitors used limos to get around town during their trip, and 1% used the Vegas Loop (the underground Tesla transportation system from Elon Musk). We’ll take the under on that one. It only goes to Resorts World at the moment. We told you this report is reliably unreliable. We suspect Russian interference.
8. About 54% of Las Vegas visitors went downtown during their stay. Please get your mind out of the gutter, this is a very serious subject. That number is down from 58% in 2022.
9. Unfortunately for downtown Las Vegas, Gen Z is the age demo most likely to visit downtown (64% of downtown visitors), the group with the least amount of disposable income. (24% of Gen Z visitors stayed in a room with four or more occupants.) These folks love experiences, though, and downtown is definitely that.
10. About 54% of downtown visitors went down for the Fremont Street Experience, that’s up from 50% the year before. This question is always a bit wonky, as it’s unclear what respondents mean by the Fremont Street Experience. Are they talking about the video screen? The live music? The people-watching? The street party? Is that all lumped under Fremont Street Experience?
11. Just 2% of survey respondents said the reason they didn’t visit downtown was because they didn’t want to take their children there. Just 2%. WTF is wrong with people? Fremont Street is no place for children. Why? Because Las Vegas is no place for children. Don’t get us started.
12. Now, you’ve done it! A whopping 16% of people say they brought someone in their party under 21. Translation: Kids. It was 16% in 2022 and 21% in 2021. We were interviewed about all this on CNBC a while back. In 2019, just 5% of those surveyed brought their kids, it was 6% in 2018. Yes, there are more things for children to do in Las Vegas than ever, but that doesn’t mean people have to do them.
13. Phew, 79% of visitors gambled during their stay. Somebody has to make it so residents don’t have to pay state income tax.
14. The average gambling budget of Las Vegas visitors was $787.54. In 2018, it was $527.05. We blame F1.
15. Visitors went to an average of 3.7 casinos during their stay (the .7 is Ellis Island, it’s wee) and gambled at an average of 1.8 casinos.
16. Average nightly room rates in 2023 hit a new high of $171.98. Well, “high” is relative, especially if you have stayed in a hotel in any other major city in the world. Let’s keep it real. Even with paid parking and nuisance fees, Las Vegas is still a relatively great value.
17. The average number of days (4.3) and nights (3.3) stayed in Las Vegas was down a smidge from 2022 (4.4 and 3.4, respectively). We blame it on children. And possibly F1. But mostly children. Just the sheer smell alone would make people want to bail on a hotel room. It takes housekeeping longer to get rid of the kid smell than weed smell. Why isn’t that in the visitor survey?
18. Visitors surveyed said their food and beverage budget was $564.73, up from $519.23 in 2022. The average budget was $314.96 in 2018. Hence all the whining.
19. Just 26% of visitors saw a show during their trip, a staggering drop since 2018 (when 58% of visitors said they saw a show). This shift has changed the Las Vegas entertainment scene dramatically. Residencies, sports and Sphere are grabbing all the entertainment dollars now. And “Absinthe,” but pretty much those other things.
20. Blah, blah, something sports.
21. Despite the complaining about Las Vegas we hear day in and day out in social media, the survey from the LVCVA says 97% of visitors were either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their visit. The rest were trick-rolled.
22. Of those surveyed, 84% said they’re extremely or very likely to return to Las Vegas in the future.
23. Las Vegas visitors in 2023 were 64% married, which basically means on vacation they slip off their wedding rings.
24. The average age of a Las Vegas visitor was 43.8, compared to 45.1 in 2018 and 46.2 in 2019. Oddly, the average stripper age in Las Vegas has remained exactly the same.
25. In 2013, of those Las Vegs visitors surveyed, 61% were white, 14% were African-American, 9% were Asian, 13% were Hispanic and 3% were people who thought they were white but after sending saliva to Ancestry.com learned, “OMFG, I’m Micronesian!”
That’s it. We’re winded.
If you’d like to get more granular, you can see the full report, the entire kit and caboodle, on the LVCVA Web site.
Yes, fellow youths, kits (collections) and caboodles (bundles) were once common in our society. You would almost never see a kit without a caboodle, actually. “Kit and caboodle” means “shebang.”
We were going to make a Ricky Martin joke, then realized “She Bangs” was released in 2000, so many of our fellow youths weren’t even born yet.
Whole enchilada? Is that politically incorrect? We’re pretty sure “lock stock and barrel” is.
Anyway, we hope you have enjoyed this rambling exercise in writing a story when there’s no big news happening in Las Vegas right now.
We would love to hear what questions you’d like included in the next Las Vegas Visitor Profile Study. Here are some we’d love to see.
“Did you bring any special toys to Las Vegas?”
“Did your hotel housekeeper make any towel animals? If so, did you realize due to union rules, that cost the hotel $1,250?”
“Did you emotionally break down when you heard the Mirage volcano was going away?”
“War, what is it good for?”
“Did you visit downtown and what were the things you can’t unsee?”
“During your Las Vegas visit, how many times did some asshat blow smoke in your face?”
Enjoy this world premiere of a song we made for you. We can't stop singing it and hope you do not have the same experience, probably. pic.twitter.com/f0BKdxYJWj
— Vital Vegas (@VitalVegas) September 7, 2024
“At any point during your stay, did you watch a dinosaur perform magic? Also, did you realize at the time how much Piff hates being called a dinosaur rather than a dragon?”
“What irksome fee did you discover on your restaurant tab?”
“Did you attend any magic shows? If so, where did David Copperfield touch you?”
“What is the deal with escalators in Las Vegas?”
“Did you actually think that beautiful woman was talking to you in the lobby bar because you’re interesting?”
“During your stay, were you ever stung on the testicles by a scorpion and do you have an ambulance-chasing lawyer yet?”
“Remember when every casino had a comedy-hypnosis show? Does anyone really miss them all that much?”
“How big a second mortgage did you need to pay your hotel minibar tab?”
“At any point during your stay, did you strike up a conversation with a slot machine? Not that anyone would do that, especially not us, we are a survey, but still.”
“Did you enjoy your hotel room, or did you get one with a view of air conditioning vents and mating pigeons?”
“Are you one of those people who, every time a slot machine is down, assumes it was a Russian hack and what brand of aluminum foil is your favorite?”
“If you stayed in Las Vegas during the summer, on a scale of 0-4, what stage is your melanoma?”
“Jerry’s Nugget. How is that dump even allowed to exist?”
“How many times did you look at the butts of scantily-clad women pressuring tourists for tips before your wife noticed? Also, can you substantiate your answer with photos? Which you could e-mail us if that’s not too much trouble?”
“Did you notice casino gift shops don’t have prices on the items and why don’t you like surprises?”
“How many times during your visit did you swear you will never gamble again, right before gambling again?”
“If you’re visiting from a foreign country, did you use your adorable accent during your stay or have a meter-long slushy drink? Because they’re usually called yard-longs, in case that weren’t obvious?”
“On a related note, does it bother you we didn’t find this survey stat until we started writing these questions? The international visitor segment (12%) continued to recover, growing from 9% last year and well ahead of the pandemic low of 3% in 2021.”
“Did you know prostitutes sometimes perform sexual acts in hotel ice machine rooms because they don’t have cameras? Allegedly?”
“Did you do any exercise-related activities during your stay and if so, what is wrong with you?”
“What kind of things do you blame on F1?”
Well, that was certainly a fun comedic device, wasn’t it?
Actually, we’d love to see this annual Las Vegas survey infused with more provocative questions.
Let’s f-bomb go, LVCVA!
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