In Brief:
- Former U.S. Congresswoman Shelley Berkley became mayor of Las Vegas in December.
- Berkley has publicly invited Canadian and Mexican tourists to visit the city amid a tourism slump this summer.
- Las Vegas has been experiencing rapid growth for decades.
Last year, during a televised debate in the Las Vegas mayoral race, Shelley Berkley, a former seven-term Democratic congresswoman from Nevada running to replace outgoing mayor Carolyn Goodman, said this: “Whoever inherits the mayor’s position is almost destined for success.”
Now, nine months into her term as mayor, Las Vegas is facing a significant slump in tourism, by far its most important industry. Total visitation in the city was down 6.7 percent this past August versus the year before, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The federal government’s hard-line immigration policies may be partly responsible: Flights from Canada and Mexico, the countries with the biggest shares of Las Vegas’ international tourism, are down 19 percent and 12 percent respectively, according to the LVCVA.
And, unrelated to the tourism slump, Las Vegas is also paying down a settlement from a decades-old lawsuit that has strained the city’s finances and led to a temporary hiring freeze…