Is Vegas back? Struggling Sin City surges in US travel survey

Vegas, maybe!

A year after a widely reported decline in tourism, Las Vegas is showing signs of a rebound.

According to new data released by travel provider Priceline, Sin City topped a list of most searched destinations, year-over-year, for this month.

The desert oasis surged ahead of perennially popular Orlando and New York.

Another Western destination that’s gotten its share of bad press lately, Seattle, snagged the No. 5 spot. And even plummeting Portland got in on the good West Coast news — the struggling city is currently one of the top five for hotel values, nationwide.

Vegas’ apparent surge follows a flurry of bleak reports regarding the declining number of visitors to the gaming Gomorrah.

In July of last year, the casino capital saw a 12% drop from in visitors from the previous year — according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

This July, numbers were creeping back up —  2.7% year-over-year.

Hotel performance also improved year-over-year, the agency said, with occupancy reaching 77.2%, up 1.1 percentage points.

Convention attendance, however, fell 5.6% from year.

One very good falling number: The cost of leisure and hospitality in a destination widely decried for its soaring prices. Those numbers were down 1.1% year-over-year in July of 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2025, LVCVA’s chief executive Steve Hill hit back against complaints from tourists about the city’s high prices for food and hotels.

“The idea that generally Las Vegas is not a value, that it is overpriced, I don’t think our customers are doing math when they are concerned about a specific issue,” Hill said.

“They’re expressing concern about that specific topic, that tends to then move into a narrative around Las Vegas is expensive or Las Vegas is not a value, but if you actually do the math on that, that’s not accurate.”

In a recent address to the Nevada Economic Forum, Hill pointed to rising costs of jet fuel and retail gas prices as reasons for the sagging numbers.

And there’s politics to consider, too. Visitors from Canada, the city’s largest source of international tourism, have dropped 30% since 2019, according to Hill.

“It is a big portion of what’s missing in Las Vegas here right now,” he said.

Younger visitors are also a driver of the city’s tourism decline. Visitors aged 21-29 have decreased more than 10% since 2022, according to the LVCVA.

Live entertainment remains a bright spot, specifically the Sphere — which generated a whopping $379 million in 2025, making it the world’s highest earning entertainment venue.

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