DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:
For fabulous Las Vegas, 2025 was not a fabulous year. Sin City saw its biggest drop in visitors since the days of the pandemic. Luke Winkie, a staff writer at Slate, calls it America's most flailing destination city. He spent some time on the Strip to find out why, and he joins us now. Thanks for being here.
LUKE WINKIE: Thanks, Daniel. Happy to be here.
ESTRIN: Well, you write that you know more people who hate the city than who love it. And you're one of the lovers. So what drew you to Vegas?
WINKIE: I mean, I remember this very distinct night that I first fell in love with Las Vegas. I was out there covering, like, a video game tournament. And, you know, I took out a couple of hundred dollars, and I went to the blackjack table for the first time in my life, and I played blackjack all night and had this kind of magical thing that could only happen in Las Vegas, where all of a sudden, I'm like, making friends with people at the table. We're getting free drinks. We're getting kind of bad ideas of how the night could unfold from here. And, you know, I made some money. And then the next day, I kept playing, and I lost all that money. And there's a few other places on Earth that kind of let you just be a degenerate and be receptive...
ESTRIN: (Laughter).
WINKIE: ...And accepting to your own degeneracy for a little bit. And I've just loved it ever since, I think, for that reason.
ESTRIN: Well, that initial trip you took was a decade ago, and so much has changed. I mean, this past year, tourism has been down all across the United States. Is it really much worse in Vegas?
WINKIE: Yeah. So it's interesting - right? - 'cause, like, the numbers will all say that - right? - that, like, tourism is down anywhere between, like, 10 to, like, 6%, depending on what metrics you look at. I think the starkest number I found was that this past July, hotel rooms in the city were 66.7% full, and that's down by 16.8% from the year before. Sixteen point eight percent is pretty big, but it's not like the city is, like, a ghost town now. It's more just that some of the things that made Vegas approachable to people on a budget or just people who aren't, like, the ultra-rich have kind of disappeared. Like when I fell in love with Las Vegas, I was playing Blackjack at, like, a $5 minimum. Those tables have pretty much disappeared. If I go to Vegas now, I'm going to be having to risk $25 for each bet I make. So 25-year-old me, who took out a couple of hundred bucks and was making $40,000 a year, would just get cleaned out instantly.
ESTRIN: What about online gambling? Is that a factor in the decline in tourists?
WINKIE: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, I think that has to be considered, right? We all are walking around with casinos in our pockets right now. At the same time, like, when I think about what I love about Vegas, it's kind of that social element of being at a table with a bunch of people and talking mess and making your bets and, you know, just enjoying the night together. And I don't think you can really get that from, you know, just opening an app on your phone and losing a couple of dollars.
ESTRIN: I think something that's very telling that you mentioned in your piece is that, even as you're tracking a drop in tourism, gambling revenue in Las Vegas has actually gone up quite a lot. And it's not just those higher blackjack minimum bets that you talk about. There's a tweak to the roulette wheel.
WINKIE: Right. Yeah. Casinos around Vegas started introducing what is now known as triple-zero roulette. So they've added an extra zero to take your money more efficiently than ever before. They've already had, like, a pretty significant edge on roulette, but the house just kind of decided, well, that's not enough. Let's add another space to make the game even more unfair.
ESTRIN: Wow. Well, we've talked about what Vegas is like now for the visiting gambler, but what I loved the most about what you wrote in Slate was just all the Vegas characters you interviewed. You know, you chatted up a showgirl with red peacock feathers, and you met a guy dressed as Pennywise the freaky clown, all these people who actually make their living off the Strip. What did they tell you about all these changes?
WINKIE: I got the sense that they felt that some of the big-ticket expansion in Vegas, the Sphere, the F1 race, that obviously is going to bring a lot of international travelers, but it's going to bring the international travelers that are - have the kind of cash to go to the F1 race. The prevailing theory I got from these folks was that those are the kind of travelers that aren't necessarily be walking up and down the Strip to take a photo with Pennywise. Like, when I think about the people who are going to take a photo with Pennywise or a Captain America, who I also spoke to, I think of people like, I don't know, my mom or, like, my in-laws or something, the people that would go to Vegas for 36 hours to play the penny slots and have a good time, I guess they had the same kind of theory that, as Vegas courts tourists of a higher economic caliber, that they're getting left in the dust a little bit.
ESTRIN: You know, if all the wealthy visitors are coming and Vegas is becoming a place where the high rollers are coming, is that really such a bad thing if it means that middle-class folks aren't developing gambling habits?
WINKIE: (Laughter) I think that is a fair observation. I think Vegas, for as long as it's existed, has destroyed a lot of people. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I think there is something to be said about a place in the desert you can go to for a couple of nights that sort of makes a lot of the anxieties you have just briefly immaterial, a place where you can kind of ever so briefly live above your means for a little bit without feeling like you're being judged or punished for it. It's good to have that release valve for a society.
ESTRIN: Luke Winkie, staff writer at Slate Magazine. Thank you so much for talking with me. It was a lot of fun.
WINKIE: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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