Empty airports and planes barely one-third full are an unusual sight in a top travel hub like Las Vegas. For a city known for party enthusiasts and convention crowds, bustling terminals are the norm. However, a new video, which has gone viral on social media, suggests declining tourism in the most populous city in Nevada. The video, shared by a tourist on X (formerly Twitter), shows eerily empty hallways with no lines or passengers, staggeringly opposite to the usual energy of the city.
“Las Vegas is dead,” Jake Broe wrote while sharing the video online. He added that he had “never seen the parking garage at the airport this empty.” Commenting on the rare occurrence, reportedly at 6 AM on a Friday, he said, “I did not see another person until I made it to the TSA Precheck line in the terminal.”
Broe also posted a picture of himself and wrote, “The plane was less than a third full. I had an entire row to myself for probably the first time since I was a teenager,” as he boarded his United Airlines flight.
Las Vegas is dead. I have never seen the parking garage at the airport this empty and I did not see another person until I made it to the TSA PreCheck line in the terminal. pic.twitter.com/gp2lG3qsRn
— Jake Broe (@RealJakeBroe) August 2, 2025
This comes after Las Vegas reported a dip in hotel occupancy by 6.5 per cent, and average daily room rates dropped to $163 from roughly $194 as per the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) report. It noted a 41% year-over-year decline in traffic at Harry Reid Airport. A Forbes report from July also projected that US tourism could lose $29 billion amid Trump’s tariff frenzy.
‘We are not worth the hassle and I agree’
Netizens were not surprised by what Broe shared, the empty airports and declining rate of tourists in Las Vegas. A user wrote under the post, “Florida has a lot fewer out-of-state license plates and far less international tourists this summer. My Australian friends have switched to Japan over the USA for vacation. We are not worth the hassle, and I agree.”
“The immigration in your country has been humiliating tourists in every possible way,” opined another user on X. This comes as a blow to high visa fees and rejection based on undisclosed grounds for tourists as well as immigrants. “Tourists do not want to be unjustifiably detained by ICE,” read a comment that highlighted the exaggerated law enforcement actions taken by the authorities. Many users agreed with the fact that the city was overpriced, which “drove the core base away”.
On the other hand, netizens also disagreed with Broe and said that the video was shot much earlier than 6 am, and attributed the empty aisles to the odd hours and an unpopular season to travel to the destination.
Why is US tourism declining?
The Forbes report, based on a World Travel and Tourism Council Study (WTTC), the US was the only country with declining international visitors in 2025. The Trump-led superpower is set to lose $12.5 billion in tourist spending as compared to the previous year’s data. Moreover, Tourism Economics revised their baseline forecast to predict an overall dip of 8.2% in international inbound travel in 2025 so far for the US. But why is this the case?
US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, travel bans, “inflammatory rhetoric,” the report suggests, along with stringent immigration norms, have had a detrimental effect on tourist traffic. Canadians were the highest-paying tourists in the US, as per NTTO data and made up one-fourth of the entire foreign travellers in 2024. But a significant decline of nearly 40% was observed later that year.
There have been significant reports of a building negative perception of the US as international travellers decline, but the hospitality industry is optimistic about a bounce-back.
