Las Vegas is hurting as tourism drops. Are Canadians behind the Sin City slump?
Local politicians have good reason to be anxious about the Canadian travel boycott, said Stephen Miller, an economics professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
As the director of the university’s business and economic research centre, he crunched the numbers and found Canadians contributed $3.6 billion US to the local economy last year.
Canadian spending supported some 43,000 jobs in the region, more than those employed in the manufacturing sector, Miller said.
That $3.6-billion figure comes close to the economic output of the local Nellis Air Force base — and that’s saying something, given it’s one of the largest and most important military installations in the U.S., with some 15,000 personnel.
“The Canadian numbers have gone down dramatically and it’s an area of concern for the casinos,” Miller said. “After all, the main goal of the resort industry is to put heads in beds.”