Canadians Opt for Vegas

Las Vegas is seemingly an incredibly popular tourist destination for a large number of Canadians, although Canucks’ main reasons for visiting the city are often outside of the norm. Instead of traditional casino gaming, Canadians tend to be more enticed by the presence of live winter sports in Vegas, including curling and hockey.

So popular are these sports with Canadian visitors that Canadians actually account for the large majority of all foreign visitors to Sin City, according to recently released official data. Although Vegas has remained a far more popular gambling and tourism hub for US locals than it is for foreigners, folks from up North still regularly visit the metropolis to seek out great entertainment for themselves.

Vegas’ popularity among Americans has been made clear in new stats from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which published figures and analyses with regards to visitation numbers, profiles of tourists, tourism numbers and much more. According to the LVCVA’s latest report, over 84% of the visitors to the city last year were from the US itself, with foreigners making up just 16% of the total.

In turn, the majority of the 16% mentioned above was comprised of visitors from Canada, with an average of 1.44 million Canucks seeking out the gambling hub each year. As mentioned earlier, the main reason for this is actually the city’s variety of live winter sports instead of its glitzy casinos, combined with Vegas’ pleasing climate and close proximity to the Canadian border.

These factors have made Sin City a very popular travel destination for Canadian sports enthusiasts, who can watch live shows and their favourite teams and then take a trip to a casino floor all in a single day. Many of these visitors hail from the Western provinces of Canada, according to Brian Killingsworth, the Chief Marketing Officer of ice hockey team the Vegas Golden Knights.

It’s important to note than seven Canadian teams are participating in the NHL at the moment. Although none of the Canadian clubs have won the Stanley cup during the last quarter-century, many fans still cross the border to see their favourite teams at play during the season. LVCVA data shows that 54% of all Canadian direct air passengers to Vegas are from Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

According to the Authority’s Director of Sports Marketing, Western Canadians are also vital for Vegas’ industry. She noted that aside from hockey, curling is also attracting thousands of spectators each year, with the main reason behind curling’s popularity in the city being due to the sport’s Canadian fan base. Vegas’ addition of an NFL team in 2020 and a possible future NBA club will also make the region appealing to Canadians, especially as winter approaches and Canadian leagues become inactive.

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