Jessica Murray has been looking forward to visiting Las Vegas for months.
The Huntsville, Ontario, high school English literature teacher was looking forward to her first trip to Las Vegas in May.
But after Donald Trump was elected president, began making comments about turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state and implemented a series of tariffs on Canadian goods, Murray had second thoughts, canceled her trip to Las Vegas and began planning to go to Iceland instead.
Meanwhile, Jamie Browning and his wife, Ashley, residents of Alberta, are Las Vegas superfans that have visited Southern Nevada 20 times in the last five years, including five times last year. They’re annoyed with the political firestorm that has erupted around tariffs, but still plan to come later this year and hope to see their first Las Vegas Aviators game.
Industry experts have mixed feelings about whether Trump’s tariff plans will put a dent in visitation from Canada, but there was at least one piece of evidence reported late last month that suggests they will.
Fewer on Canada flights
The Clark County Aviation Department reported airline passenger statistics were down significantly in February compared with the previous year. Yet February was technically a good month. It was the second-best February on record by hotel room tax generation, second only to February 2024 when Las Vegas hosted Super Bowl 58 and the month had 29 days instead of 28 because of leap year.
Still, the numbers from Canadian air carriers in February produced plenty of doubt.
Canada’s busiest carrier to Harry Reid International Airport, discounter WestJet, saw passenger numbers dive 17.3 percent to 55,541. Another discount airline, Flair, was off 55.2 percent to 11,740 while national flag carrier Air Canada fell 5 percent to 50,652. Porter Airlines, another Canadian carrier, had 16,757 passengers but wasn’t flying to and from Las Vegas in February 2024.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Steve Hill admitted that the geopolitical atmosphere involving tariff policy does concern him, but he added one off month in February doesn’t represent a trend. March visitation statistics won’t be reported until the end of April.
“Our visitation from Canada was probably down in the 9 percent range,” Hill said of February. “One month doesn’t really make a trend, but there’s an awful lot of the anecdotal conversation around Canadians being angry and upset about tariffs and talk around annexing the country. Anecdotal comments to us from our airline partners is, yes, for the most part, it’ll be down in that 10-15 percent range.”
Tourism Economics, a Pennsylvania-based group that forecasts travel trends, said last week after President Trump’s tariff plans were initially disclosed that it believes visitation from Canada to the U.S. will be down 20 percent.
Hill said because Las Vegas is a discretionary destination, the drop may be more than 15 percent from Canada. He said he’s looking forward to next week’s National Association of Broadcasters trade show, which tracks its international delegates. That may confirm if there’s a higher level of Canadian no-shows than usual.
Canada’s ads
Another wild card in the tariff issue is the Canadian government’s attempts to influence policy. Nevada was one of 14 U.S. states, most of them tourism dependent, in which Global Affairs Canada, the nation’s manager of consular and diplomatic relations promoting international trade, purchased billboard space in an attempt to convince American consumers that President Trump’s tariff plans would do them more harm than good.
In large white letters on a black field with the familiar maple-leaf flag and a tag saying, “Paid for by the Government of Canada,” the billboards say, “Tariffs are a tax on hardworking Americans,” and “Tariffs are a tax on your grocery bill.”
While Canadian supporters view the billboards as an attempt to educate American consumers about tariffs, Hill views it as an effort to influence the next generation of American voters.
“I think those campaigns are trying to cause future voters to weigh in on this issue,” Hill said.
He’s actually more concerned that the messages could negatively influence consumer confidence and possibly drive up inflation.
“We’ve seen consumer confidence numbers drop pretty significantly over the past couple of months,” he said.
Other industry experts have mixed views of whether tariff policy will influence Las Vegas visitation.
Like Hill, Billy Vassiliadis, chairman of R&R Partners, the LVCVA’s contracted advertising and marketing consultant, is concerned mostly about consumer confidence and how it will impact visitation.
“We’re seeing an international disruption right now,” Vassiliadis said. “And the numbers that have become more disconcerting is the consumer confidence number.”
But Las Vegas also has the advantage of being an “escape destination,” he said. Because Las Vegas is relatively easy to get to with so many nonstop flights and lodging is usually plentiful and doesn’t need a deposit, visitors can just show up without much prior planning, stay a few days and veg out.
“We’ve seen it in every crisis,” Vassiliadis said. “It’s the place where people come. They don’t have to watch the news. They don’t have to look at the clock. They don’t have to have a wild itinerary. They don’t have to go to 14 places. They come here to just breathe for a few days. That’s what’s always gotten us through it.”
Brendan Bussmann agrees.
“While there may be some impacts based off of geopolitical forces, Las Vegas is no stranger to these based off a tariff issue or other economic and political concerns that have challenged us for the last several years with inflation and other key measures,” said Bussmann, a gaming industry analyst with Las Vegas-based B Global. “One month does not set a trend but we have to monitor this as we do the rest of the economic factors.”
The plunging WestJet passenger numbers are no cause for immediate concern based on recent history, he said.
“If you look at the WestJet numbers from 2023 vs. 2025, the numbers still show a positive trend with 2024 up over both but not specifically attributed on anything specific based off of the data I have available,” he said.
Amanda Belarmino, an assistant professor at UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hospitality, said Las Vegas tourism already had softened before tariff issues arose and she believes the current environment is more about political partisanship than economics.
“Without the Super Bowl and (Formula One), we would have been down in all metrics in the last years,” Belarmino said. “Therefore, I think it is more political partisanship that is creating a causal relationship between the tariffs and the in-bound tourism. Inflation, cost of living, and a strong dollar have more to do with a decrease in international tourism than tariffs.”
Belarmino believes the high-profile attack on Las Vegas’ Tesla dealership did more to discourage visitation than tariffs.
She supports Trump’s efforts to bring balance to trade inequities.
“The U.S. pays out millions of dollars a year in foreign aid to Canada, a first-world country rich in resources, including oil,” she said. “Canada spent 1.37 percent of their gross domestic product on their military in 2024 while we spent 3.4 percent, making the U.S. the highest spender on defense. Therefore, Canada is benefiting from our military and our soldiers to defend them. Meanwhile, they have not been properly patrolling their side of the border and have allowed dangerous criminals into the U.S. Therefore, the proposed tariffs are being used as a negotiating tactic to even out these inequities in treasure and blood that our country has been sacrificing for them.”
The Nevada Resort Association believes it’s too early to reach any conclusions.
“It’s an evolving situation we are monitoring closely,” said Virginia Valentine, president and CEO of the association. “As it comes into focus, we’ll have a better understanding as to whether this is a seasonal issue, a tough comparison to an outstanding month last year or something else. We very much value our Canadian visitors and encourage them to continue to come to Las Vegas.”
And it’s the Jessica Murrays and the Brownings of the world Nevada resorts would like to see.
“We were going to go for five days,” Murray said. “Las Vegas is a place that you see on TV all the time, so I was really excited to see it in real life.”
Flying not safe
Murray is convinced the U.S. isn’t a safe destination with the removal of air traffic controllers from their jobs.
“Once air traffic controllers started getting fired and all of a sudden it seemed dangerous to actually be in a plane (in the U.S.),” she said.
The tariff issue was the last straw for her.
“It’s become sort of a rallying point for Canadians,” she said. “I think we’re often so humble. It’s like we were feeling attacked. It’s like a friend stabbing you in the back and it hurts the heart.”
The Brownings, meanwhile, not only love Las Vegas, they boost it with YouTube videos and on Twitter under the @vegasvaluations tag with nearly 1,000 followers.
A former radio broadcaster using his skill set to produce videos as a hobby, Jamie Browning loves attending Vegas Golden Knights games and exploring everything Southern Nevada has to offer.
“I’ve been to Vegas now so many times that I’ve seen, officially, more hockey in Vegas live than I’ve seen even in my home province,” Browning said.
The couple has found a new favorite place to stay — The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, blogging a review that praised it for its excellent Strip views.
The Brownings are hooked on Las Vegas because of the energy it generates.
“There is just an undeniable, distinct energy that Las Vegas offers that you cannot, at least in any of my travels, find anywhere else and the energy starts as soon as you get off the plane,” he said.
But even though he craves that energy, some of his Canadian friends aren’t going to stand for what’s happening politically.
“I would argue that probably a good majority of Canadians kind of took the tariffs as a bit of a slap in the face, because it kind of seemingly came out of nowhere,” Browning said. “And there was that, ‘OK, well, if you don’t want this, then you maybe don’t want my tourism dollars either.’”
The end game
At least one stakeholder in Southern Nevada tourism is hoping North American governments can come to a fair agreement on tariffs.
One of the most concentrated gatherings of Canadians occurs when Las Vegas hosts global curling events.
Jon Killoran, CEO of Sports Nevada USA and one of the leaders of the effort to bring the Winter Olympic Games to the Lake Tahoe region, has overseen attracting several curling events at The Orleans over the years. While the competition is intense, curling usually draws a friendly fan base of Canadians that’s mostly interested in partying with other aficionados in the warmer Southern Nevada climate.
While there aren’t any curling competitions on the Las Vegas calendar for the next several months, the likelihood of an event being planned prior to upcoming Olympic Games events is high.
“I guess what I would say is we would hope that when we do announce something down the road, that that event and the joy that people have felt coming to the past events and wanting to come back would trump the politics of the day,” he said, enjoying his own pun.
“Certainly, I would hope for the entirety of tourism to Las Vegas and our positive relationship with Canadians for decades upon decades that there would be a meeting of the minds that comes up with a formula that can work for everybody and then we move on from there.”
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.
