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The visitor report: an inside look

News item: the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority recently released its 2013 Visitor Profile study, which found that tourists who come to Las Vegas are, increasingly, younger and less likely to gamble. Here are some other interesting findings and facts from the report.


  • 5 percent of visitors wake up in a tub of ice, missing a kidney. A completely different 5 percent wake up in a tub of ice with a new kidney.

  • 15 percent wake up in a tub of ice “for business purposes.”

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  • Visitors found casino-floor carpets 19 percent less hideous than in 2012.

  • 23 percent of visitors tried Slotzilla, and what happened next will blow your mind. 

  • 65 percent of visitors are serif; 30 percent are sans serif; 5 percent have tiny nubs that could be serifs, but maybe not, and prefer blackjack.

  • When asked why they decided to visit Las Vegas, 3 percent of visitors responded by pulling the shower curtain around them and shouting, How did you get in here, get out, I’m calling security, etc.

  • 38 percent of visitors reported having 71 percent of a “satisfactory visit” at least 19 percent of the time during the first 55 percent of an average 4.3-day stay, more or less.

  • 13 percent of visitors purchased a vacation package. 2 percent of visitors purchased a “vacation package,” i.e., a powdery white substance in a zip-lock baggie from a guy who goes by “Stubbs.”

  • 5 percent of respondents are still waiting in line to get into XS.

  • 2 percent of visitors resorted to dressing up as a Transformer for gas money home.

  • 11 percent of visitors stayed on the Boulder Strip to take advantage of more affordable room rates and to sample a quaintly dystopian atmosphere of desolate post-urban decay.

  • .0001 percent of visitors named Fran Heimler from Minnesota are still lost in a hopeless labyrinth of flashing video slot machines at Palace Station, the 78-year-old’s increasingly weak cries for help drowned out by the ceaseless, implacable, low roar of the casino floor until Fran, finally spent, starts to fade away, her life-force draining from her eye sockets in a glowing wisp, which dissipates into the air like smoke. Coming from nowhere — yet everywhere — a deep, infernal burp of demonic satisfaction resounds throughout the casino. 

  • 100 percent of visitors could have seen the real Eiffel Tower for about the same price.
Scott Dickensheets is a Las Vegas writer and editor whose trenchant observations about local culture have graced the pages of publications nationwide.
As a longtime journalist in Southern Nevada, native Las Vegan Andrew Kiraly has served as a reporter covering topics as diverse as health, sports, politics, the gaming industry and conservation. He joined Desert Companion in 2010, where he has helped steward the magazine to become a vibrant monthly publication that has won numerous honors for its journalism, photography and design, including several Maggie Awards.