for early access to the latest igaming videos!
and get the latest igaming news first!
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is escalating her fight with the Trump administration over what she calls a missing federal plan for travel and tourism, saying Nevada is being left to guess how Washington’s decisions are affecting an industry that underpins the state’s economy.
Nevada’s Las Vegas Strip runs on foot traffic. When visitor numbers soften, it shows up fast in hotel occupancy, convention calendars, restaurant spend, and gaming floors. Cortez Masto says Washington is leaving states like hers to connect the dots without data.
In a Nov. 24, 2025, letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other senior officials, the Nevada Democrat asked the administration to spell out how federal decisions are affecting inbound travel, airline demand, and visitor spending. She asked for a response by the end of 2025.
That deadline passed without a reply, according to reporting that described her as being “stonewalled” after earlier outreach produced little more than broad, noncommittal responses.
“Not theoretical”: the senator ties policy choices to jobs and paychecks
She argues the downturn is already touching workers and small businesses that depend on tourism dollars. In her letter, she wrote that the impact “is not theoretical,” saying she is hearing directly from people whose hours and income move with visitor volume. She also pointed to U.S. Travel Association forecasts that project inbound travel spending to fall to $173 billion and international visitation to decline by 6.3%, leaving the U.S. at about 85% of 2019 levels.
Canada is one of her biggest red flags. Cortez Masto’s letter describes prolonged weakness in Canadian travel and says destinations like Nevada were already taking a noticeable hit — a sensitive issue for Las Vegas, which leans heavily on international and long-haul visitors during key parts of the calendar.
Her frustration is also aimed at what she calls the lack of a coordinated federal response. In the letter, she said previous agency feedback was “generalized,” and she flagged the absence of substantive engagement from Commerce and Homeland Security, the departments that control the levers around travel promotion and border processing.
Where she says Washington went quiet
That criticism comes as Las Vegas officials have been tracking a softer stretch through 2025. Separate reports have linked the dip to affordability concerns and weaker consumer confidence, alongside a sharper decline in Canadian visitation. For the casino industry, those trends matter because the Strip’s business model is built on volume: fewer visitors can quickly mean fewer hotel nights, less gaming spend, and less momentum across entertainment.
Cortez Masto is also pushing the administration to fill the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Travel and Tourism role, which Congress created to keep travel policy from falling between agencies. The position was established in 2022 and was later funded, with industry advocates arguing it is meant to coordinate federal action and address bottlenecks that slow international arrivals.
Source:
