Tourism - VEGAS INC

RTC unveils long-ranging transportation plan that includes light rail

In this Sept. 16, 2014, photo taken with a slow-shutter speed, lights of cars blur along Las Vegas Boulevard.

Southern Nevada tourism leaders on Monday unveiled an ambitious, multibillion-dollar transit plan that could make substantial upgrades to the way people move around Las Vegas over the next few decades, including through the ...

7 December 2015

By J.D. Morris

Tourism officials discuss more details of convention center project

Exterior of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Tourism executives offered more insight today into plans to expand and renovate the Las Vegas Convention Center as they continued to make their case to a committee that will be influential in funding the project. The LVCVA is already ...

3 December 2015

By J.D. Morris

Number of Las Vegas visitors hits 3.8 million in October, up 5.6 percent

Tourists take photos at the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign Saturday, March 14, 2015, on the Strip.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority says nearly 3.8 million people visited the destination in October, an increase of 5.6 percent compared to a year ago. The agency ...

30 November 2015

By Las Vegas Sun Staff

Irish dad whose selfie video was a YouTube hit back in Las Vegas

The clueless Irish dad whose accidental selfie video of his Las Vegas vacation was watched by millions is back in Sin City to get a do over. This time ...

20 November 2015

By Sally Ho, Associated Press

Rihanna, Mick Jagger party as gold-rush mood grips Havana

Fans take photographs of singer Rihanna as she gets on an American classic car after a photo shoot with photographer Annie Leibovitz at a building on the Malecon on Friday, May 29, 2015, in Havana, Cuba.

By midnight, the basement of one of Havana's hottest clubs is packed wall-to-wall for a private concert by one of Cuba's biggest pop stars. Squeezed among the usual crowd of sleek young Cubans and prowling European tourists, the owner of one of New York's hippest restaurants discusses ...

14 October 2015

By Michael Weissenstein, Associated Press

Riviera site to be empty lot by early 2017

Traffic passes in front of the Riviera on Sunday, May 3, 2015, in Las Vegas. The casino closed at noon May 4.

By early 2017, the site of the shuttered Riviera needs to be little more than a swath of land fit to host outdoor events. That’s when the area must be ready for a major construction industry trade show, Conexpo-Con/Agg, to ...

13 October 2015

By J.D. Morris

Tribe in South Dakota to open nation’s first marijuana resort

Consultant Jonathan Hunt checks seedlings growing in the new marijuana growing facility on Flandreau Santee Sioux Reservation on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, in Flandreau, S.D. The project, according to the tribe, could generate as much as $2 million a month in profit. The first joints are expected to go on sale Dec. 31 at a New Year’s Eve party.

The Santee Sioux is opening the nation's first marijuana resort on its reservation in South Dakota. The experiment could offer a new money-making model for tribes nationwide seeking economic opportunities beyond ...

30 September 2015

By Regina Garcia Cano, Associated Press

New Nevada tourism campaign aimed at Millennials

Nevada is launching a fresh tourism campaign focused on attracting Millennials to the state. The Nevada Commission on Tourism voted Wednesday to approve ...

30 September 2015

Associated Press

Speed Vegas breaks ground on 90-acre ‘extreme driving experience’

Erik Pappa, Clark County director of public communications, takes a photo of a Lamborghini Gallardo LP550 during a ground breaking ceremony for Speed Vegas, a $30 million, 90-acre racetrack project on Las Vegas Boulevard south of the M Resort, Monday, Sept. 21, 2015. The project is expected to open in early 2016.

Speed Vegas plans to open a 1.5-mile racetrack at Sloan Road and Las Vegas Boulevard, just off Interstate 15, next spring. Visitors would be able to grab the wheel — or strap in to the passenger seat — of a Ferrari, Lamborghini ...

22 September 2015

By Eli Segall

Turnaround for downtown casinos: Gaming revenue up two fiscal years in a row

More than a third of tourists polled in an authority survey last year said they visited downtown, up 6 percent from the year before ...

17 September 2015

By J.D. Morris

Great Basin National Park is Nevada’s intergalactic planetarium

A bristlecone pine in Great Basin National Park.

The 60-foot laser beam streaked like a lightsaber across the night sky, playing connect-the-dots with constellations in the plane of the Milky Way. On a hillside 300 miles northeast of Las Vegas in the Great Basin National Park, Derek Demeter controlled the light with shifts of his wrist. Each movement sent the laser on a light-years’ long course. It was 10 p.m. on a recent weekend and 300 park guests ...

17 September 2015

By Kyle Roerink

Problem-prone Las Vegas Strip escalators to be replaced

The Nevada Department of Transportation board voted Monday to approve a $35 million deal with California-based Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. The money will help replace 16 escalators that allow crowds of pedestrians to ...

14 September 2015

Associated Press

Las Vegas Convention Center experiments with tracking smartphones

Attendees fill the trade show floor at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015, at Las Vegas Convention Center.

In the past few months, signs at the Las Vegas Convention Center have sounded an ominous warning: “The Las Vegas Convention Center collects location information from mobile devices. If you prefer not to participate, please turn off your WiFi and Bluetooth function or power off.” With little fanfare, Cox Business put up the signs in anticipation of anonymously tracking ...

1 September 2015

By Daniel Rothberg

Downtown Las Vegas performers fret over bid to rein them in

Fremont Street Experience busker Jay Gelbman, who goes by Stogee Blues, makes a point during an informational meeting Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015, at City Council chambers regarding an ordinance affecting performances.

On the Fremont Street pedestrian mall, Michael Troy Moore can be found wearing nothing but a G-string and a stuffed rooster on his lap ...

12 August 2015

By Kimberly Pierceall, Associated Press

Toxic spill raises rafting concerns in Grand Canyon

In this Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, photo, people kayak in the Animas River near Durango, Colo., in water colored yellow from a mine waste spill. A crew supervised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been blamed for causing the spill while attempting to clean up the area near the abandoned Gold King Mine.

The amber-toned plume of toxic mining waste spilled by the Environmental Protection Agency near Silverton, Colo., last week, is slowly snaking its way toward Lake Powell — whose southern tip serves as an entry point to the Grand Canyon. In addition to threatening the ...