Top executives of two Las Vegas casino companies are confident that Las Vegas visitation will rebound this year and that Southern Nevada will get back to doing what it does best — providing a superior hospitality experience for people looking for an escape.
Bill Hornbuckle, president and CEO of MGM Resorts International, and Keith Smith, president and CEO of Boyd Gaming Corp., told the audience Friday at the closing session of Preview Las Vegas 2026, the Vegas Chamber’s largest annual networking event, that they are dedicated to bringing tourism to Las Vegas back to the record levels experienced in 2024.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported earlier this week that attendance was down 7.5 percent to 38.5 million people in 2025 from a year earlier. Monthly visitor levels have declined over the past 12 months and the occupancy rate fell 3.3 percentage points to 80.3 percent for the year.
“I have tremendous confidence in the future of Las Vegas, this community, the Strip, the local community,” Smith said in the presentation at Wynn Las Vegas. “I have tremendous confidence in this industry that will continue to evolve and continue to be successful. It’s about the community. It’s about finding ways to support the community and make sure that this community remains successful. We have our challenges that we all need to help and focus on. But we just need to continue to focus on helping the community, growing this business, doing the right things.”
Hornbuckle said he believes his company has a responsibility to reinvest in the city to make it a better place and help it grow.
“It’s our responsibility to continue to run the city and contribute to it,” he said.
Social responsibility
“We’re the state’s largest employer in my case. So I take that responsibility, as my team does, extremely, extremely hard. We know that. We’re going to continue to invest in Las Vegas. I think the key message here is that we spend about $800 million a year, every year, reinvesting almost all of that money in Las Vegas. We’re going to continue to do that, and then we have the best destination in the world. make it better at scale, period, and so for us to invest in it, because we understand the responsibility of that, motivates us every day and motivates our teams every day, and so I’m excited about that.
Smith and Hornbuckle made their presentations in an interview style with LVCVA President and CEO Steve Hill asking the questions. After the presentation, Hill said he appreciated the optimism presented by Smith and Hornbuckle.
“You heard from both Keith and Bill that they have such a commitment to this community, this industry has such a commitment to the community. They take responsibility and provide 300,000 jobs and 50 percent of the tax revenue to the state. We want to make sure that continues. So when we go through a little bit of a slowdown, we know it hurts everybody. And so we’re confident that it will remain and questionably we’re confident that it will remain the city. Vibrant.”
Hill said MGM and Boyd’s track record of success should inspire public confidence.
“I think you can see how successful those gentlemen have been, the businesses that they lead, the businesses in this community have been. And we understand that when we go through a downturn, it’s harmful to people. It hurts. They feel it. But there is, I think, a perspective that you can get from these people that we hope alleviates some of the fear of things that aren’t necessarily going to happen in the future.”
Hornbuckle and Smith shared how they were mentored to become industry leaders by their predecessors. For Smith, it’s members of the Boyd family, Sam Boyd and Bill Boyd. For Hornbuckle, it was Steve Wynn and Kirk Kerkorian.
Echelon failure
Smith joined Boyd as corporate controller in 1990 and was named president of the company in 2005 and CEO in 2008. He helped steer the company through the Great Recession and navigated Boyd through difficult times when the company had to make the difficult decision to abandon its Echelon project on the Strip at the Stardust facility and sell the land to the Las Vegas Resort Group, which turned it into Las Vegas. Smith said that while it was a painful time, the strategy ultimately saved the company and today it is a dominant player in downtown Las Vegas and in the local market with Sam’s Town, Cannery and Aliante.
Hornbuckle’s painful time came when the company nearly halted development of City Center after a failed attempt to sell condominiums in the mixed-use location on The Strip. Hornbuckle said he used the management style he learned from both Wynn and Kerkorian to weather the economic downturn.
Both Smith and Hornbuckle are optimistic that Las Vegas is experiencing a downturn in the economy and will emerge even stronger, both highlighting the strength of what could be a record convention and meeting calendar and major special events beyond 2026.
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