Las Vegas, Nevada attempts to change itself and be a peddler of family-friendly activities caused it to stumble. The MGM Grand replaced its amusement park with two nightclubs with a third one opening soon.  All of the Las Vegas hotels are following suit.

Vegas has reinvented itself by returning to the biggest, nicest place to sin ever imagined. People come to Vegas to do what they can do at home but to do it in a more ostentatious way. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas is their town logo. The fact is that “What happens in Vegas” is bragged about at home for months afterward.

The reinvented Vegas has room rates up 40% in 2004 from the same period last year. It’s the fastest-growing major U.S. city. 7,000 people move to Clark County each month. The population is 1.6 million.

Vegas is the top tourist and convention spot with the city taking in $6.5 billion in conventions, which is more than the $6.1 billion taken in gambling.

A good chunk of this gambling money is received from the under 30 crowd. Young people seem to be better educated, have more disposable income and are less averse to travel than the typical Vegas customer.

If you haven’t been to Vegas within the year odds are you won’t recognize the place because Vegas literally transforms itself while you are away.

This entry was posted by Bill Tusan on Sunday, March 12th, 2006 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Travel, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.