The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority counted nearly 3.2 million visitors in July, up 2.7 percent from July 2025. In the same month, passenger traffic at Harry Reid International Airport fell 7.6 percent, and convention attendance dropped 5.6 percent. All three figures came from official monthly reports released this week. None of the reports mentioned each other.
Three Reports, Three Directions
The LVCVA’s headline number is the one that gets repeated: more visitors than a year earlier, an acceleration from June, when the year-over-year count was essentially flat at 3.08 million, down 0.5 percent. Hotel occupancy backed that up, hitting 77.2 percent, up 1.1 percentage points, with room nights occupied rising 2.3 percent to 3.6 million.
Harry Reid International told a different story. Total passengers fell to 4.4 million, down 7.6 percent from July 2025, with domestic traffic down 8.7 percent to 4 million. International traffic was the one bright spot, up 6 percent to 296,499 passengers, the second straight month of international gains even as the domestic side kept sliding.
Convention attendance moved the opposite direction from June, when a wave of trade shows had pushed attendance up 25.8 percent to 471,100. In July, only 262,700 conventioneers showed up, a 5.6 percent decline from a year earlier, based on the same LVCVA report that recorded the visitor volume gain.
The Percentage Point Gaps
Lining the three figures up produces gaps that none of this week’s coverage calculated on its own.
- 10.3 percentage points separate the LVCVA’s 2.7 percent visitor increase from the airport’s 7.6 percent passenger decline.
- 8.3 percentage points separate the same visitor increase from the 5.6 percent drop in convention attendance, the group of travelers tourism officials generally consider the highest spenders per trip.
- 0.9 percentage points separate Las Vegas Strip gaming revenue growth of 3.6 percent from the 2.7 percent visitor increase, meaning Strip casinos grew revenue faster than the number of people the LVCVA says came to town.
The LVCVA’s visitor volume, Harry Reid’s passenger count and convention attendance are three separate measurements the authority and the airport each collect on their own, not three versions of the same count, which is exactly why a reader has to add them up rather than take any single number as a stand in for how Las Vegas tourism is doing.
An 18 Month Streak at the Airport
July’s 7.6 percent decline did not arrive on its own. A Las Vegas Sun report on January’s tourism numbers noted the airport had already logged 12 straight months of year-over-year passenger declines heading into 2026.
Adding the six months since, February, March, April, May, June and July, each independently reported as a decline, puts the current streak at 18 consecutive months, calculated by counting forward from the 12 month mark the airport itself reported in January.
Spirit Airlines’ exit factored into that stretch. Spirit shut down its Las Vegas operations on May 2, carrying just 3,869 passengers that month compared with 120,625 in April. An airport spokeswoman told the Review-Journal that Spirit’s exit “does play a role, but it is one of several variables” behind the ongoing decline.
What Is Actually Moving Gaming Revenue
Statewide gaming revenue reached $1.39 billion in July, up 2 percent from July 2025. Clark County accounted for $1.17 billion of that, up 1.5 percent, meaning the county as a whole actually grew slower than the Strip specifically, where casinos won $776.3 million, up 3.6 percent.
Table games did the heavy lifting. J.P. Morgan analyst Daniel Politzer noted that table drop, the amount wagered before the house pays out winnings, was up an “impressive 24 percent year over year,” with baccarat volumes up 43 percent and non-baccarat table volumes up 15 percent.
He called July’s table drop the highest of any month so far in 2026, unusual for what he described as historically “among the seasonally softest months for table drop.”
That surge came with a catch. The hold percentage, the share of what is wagered that the house actually keeps, fell to 12.4 percent from 17.3 percent a year earlier, a normal swing in baccarat given how few large hands determine the outcome, and a reminder that a single month’s table win reflects how the cards fell as much as how many people sat down to play.
June Versus July, Side by Side
| Metric | June 2026 | July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Visitor volume (year over year) | 3.08 million, down 0.5% | Nearly 3.2 million, up 2.7% |
| Convention attendance (year over year) | 471,100, up 25.8% | 262,700, down 5.6% |
| Hotel occupancy | 78.3%, down 0.4 points | 77.2%, up 1.1 points |
| Harry Reid airport passengers (year over year) | Down 9.3% | Down 7.6% |
| Statewide gaming revenue (year over year) | $1.344 billion, up 0.8% | $1.39 billion, up 2% |
The table shows July was not simply a repeat of June. Visitor volume growth flipped from negative to positive while convention attendance flipped from strongly positive to negative, an almost complete reversal of June’s pattern. Airport traffic stayed negative both months, though the decline eased slightly. Gaming revenue growth accelerated in both dollar terms and percentage terms.
Read on its own, any one of these reports supports a tidy story, tourism recovering, or tourism still struggling at the airport, or casinos thriving regardless.
Read together, July looks like a month where more people showed up by some measures, fewer by others, and the casinos made more money than either measure of visitation would have predicted alone.
