(Not a verbatim translation of the podcast)

This is Mondays with Mark, The Vegas Tours.com podcast.
Episode number six. Consumer Electronics Show (CES) updates and other stuff.

Going to talk a lot about CES 2026 and some other updates as far as the Vegas Tourist goes. OK, stick around. It’s going to be interesting.

First of all, I have to apologize. CES 2026 was the most disappointing, boring-est CES that I had ever attended. And I’ve been attending CES since, for those of you of a certain age, remember when the camcorder came out, the big one you would hold up on your shoulder? Yeah, that was my first CES. Man, that was hot technology back then. That was awesome!

OK, this year. Which kind of explains why a lot of other content creators are putting stuff out from CES, either it’s not as much as they used to or it’s just quick, boring shit, OK?

A lot of the larger exhibitors that would normally be there weren’t there or they had a smaller footprint.

Mostly what you saw were AI products, AI services, more services than products. And let me tell you, you’ve seen one robotic arm, you’ve seen them all, OK? And a lot of these services were just like everyone else’s, but they’re, you know, with a different name slapped on it. Not anything to really write home about.

So I had overhyped it and under-delivered because of that. All right. It’s just I wasn’t ready to expect that.

All right. So apology. OK, all right.

So what I did see there was interesting. On the main floor, on the main exhibit floors, there were a lot of new products, new services that were really trying to find funding, trying to find kickstarts.

OK? Now, CES has what’s called Eureka Park, and that is an area at the far back of the Venetian Conference Center. And it’s where universities, many international schools, tech labs, and entrepreneurs get to present. But it’s tucked away in the back and very, very crowded.

Some of them came up to the main floor, paid a lot of money to be there, but the product was not ready for prime time. So, you know, but they were like showing us, oh, you know, look at how wonderful this is going to be. Hey, we just need another ten million dollars.

OK. All right. Some of them, you could tell, were really desperate.

They, you know, they want to get this out onto the show floor. They want to get it in front of companies and people that will get it out to the consumer market so that the value of this startup skyrockets and they can sell it off to Google or somebody else for a billion dollars and go off and retire.

The AI Rabbit Hole

OK. The big question is, just how far down this rabbit hole do you want to go? On the second day, I was over at the Wynn for Samsung.

Now, Samsung is normally a major exhibitor on the main floor of the convention center. This time it was their 20th anniversary at CES, and they had this huge layout at the Wynn, which I’m going to pause here and go off track. This is the first time that I’ve been able to really look at the Wynn conference center.

This was Steve Wynn’s last project. And this conference center was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

It had a lot of potential because Steve Wynn had a huge plan for that area. He wanted to include a mini convention conference center that would be fully enclosed, kind of like at Disney World. There are areas of Disney World that are strictly conference centers.

You got a small conference center. You have a small hotel that surrounds it. You know, so if, say, Microsoft wanted to have a sales manager’s meeting, they could all go to this one spot.

They had all of the hotel rooms. They had all of the conference rooms. They had all of, you know, everything was self-contained.

And, as you, they had chased him out of town. It is so sad because of what could have been there. If you still believe Steve Wynn was chased out of town by a washed-up hairdresser, you’re reading the wrong websites.

That’s not why Steve Wynn got booted out of town. But oh, by the way, there is an Instagram account where it’s Steve Wynn reminiscing about his era in Las Vegas. What it was, how it worked, what happened, you know.

It’s a great channel. It’s interesting to watch and hear from him.

But anyway, Samsung kind of puts everything in perspective of CES 2026. And what it is was this. Just how much do I need or want to expose myself to?

It’s bad enough that every time my 80-inch flat screen doesn’t update, I have to go through and spend about an hour turning off all the spyware, ad stuff, and all that. Don’t be fooled. Your television is spying on you and sending all that information back to whoever.

That’s why Walmart spent $2 billion buying the TV maker Vizio so it could build a pipeline into who you are. What are you watching? When are you watching it? Who is watching it with you? All of that stuff goes right back into Walmart, so they know how to advertise.

So I will simplify it here. Walking through the Samsung exhibit. Do I really want my television talking to my toaster? Do I really want my refrigerator telling me that the milk is about to expire? The celery has turned brown.

You’re running low on Dr. Pepper. And oh, by the way, your sister back in Minnesota is having lasagna for tonight. Would you like to do the same thing? That’s what we’re having, people.

If you think AI is coming, you’re wrong. If you think you are in a job that is AI safe, you’re wrong. The one piece of advice that I would give to anyone out there right now, I don’t care if you’re 25 or 55. Spend an hour a day learning AI. That, you know, you need to learn this now,!

AI will infiltrate your job if it hasn’t already. It will take a lot of jobs, but it will infiltrate many more. As Jeff Bezos said many years ago, “You’re either going to be working for a robot, or you’re going to be working with a robot.” Flat out, I don’t care what job it is.

CES 2026 proved that.

There was one cool one. Yarbo lawn mower robot.

Automatic robot mowing the grass, shoveling the snow, hauling things, cutting the trees down. All robotic automation.

The bright spot in all this, to me, and my favorite product in the medical field, is the TomBot.

This is a robotic lapdog. Feels like one, acts like one. It was it was created with the help of Jim Henson Studios, the guys who made the Muppets.

They were involved in this. For people who are lonely, who are isolated, it was aimed at dementia patients. I mean, you pet it, it feels like a lapdog.

It it reacts like a lapdog. Right. That’s the good side of AI, where.

You know, if you’re back in Minnesota and you can get a message from your automated message from your grandma down in Florida saying, “Hey, she mixed up her medications. This is what you need to do.” stuff like that.

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While I was there. I saw Zoox.

OK, Zoox is that little green box with wheels you see running around Vegas. Right now it’s still fun. Free, with designated spots to catch it.

You know, go from, like, Resorts World to Area 15, or Area 15 to Topgolf, or New York, New York. Things like that. They just added the Wynn.

I was curious. Once this gets the go-ahead to start charging, they’re making other deals with places like Allegiant Stadium, T-Mobile Arena, and other tourist attractions on and around the Strip.

My question was this. If it were to go live right now. Right now, if I pick this up at Resorts World, can I go to the Bellagio? The answer is no.

Because they need a designated pickup and drop-off spot. They need to be able to get in and get out. Took me a long time to finally get someone to answer that question honestly and openly.

Which is fine because, you know, they’re still rolling out new pickup spots.

All right. So, you know, for now, it’s still free, and it’s really fun. It’s really fun to drive.

Waymo was there. Waymo is entering the Las Vegas market, and they’re just a couple of steps behind Zook. But Waymo showed off a van, a nine-passenger van, where Zook is currently just having a four-passenger. So Waymo will have a slight advantage over Zoox overall, but both will give Uber a run for its money.

So if you’re an Uber driver, good luck.

All right. That’s my CES roundup.

I was just I was disappointed. OK, I, you know, I’m compared to other ones. That and part of it might be that I’m at that age where I just don’t want to deal with fricking crowds, 140,000 people.

Oh, my God. You know, I’m tired of that. Then I did a 45,000 steps in three days. 45 or 46, I don’t remember. So, yeah, we’re really good shoes. All right.

Vegas updates.

F1 anger is getting louder. Thank you, people.

Social media is lighting up with people who are just fed up with F1 mess. Unfortunately, it’s falling on deaf ears. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) CEO Steve Hill has an unhealthy love affair with F1.

If Las Vegas just collapsed all around it and F1 was the only thing here, Steve Hill would be OK.

He’d be so fricking happy, you know, he is so tone deaf to anything not F1. All right. And a lot of people are saying this because the numbers are showing that the drop-off in tourists is historic.

It’s that we aren’t used to this month after month after month. And a lot of it is F1.

Overall, it’s the greed. OK, F1, if your business was not in that zone, that F1 zone, you were screwed. You were out of work, you were out of business.

The only people who made money were MGM, Caesars, and LVCVA, Steve Hill. Everyone else lost business.

Now, the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) comes to town, and NFR has been coming to Vegas for, I think, the 40th year. No roads closed. People from all over the world come here. The economic impact of NFR is $200–300 million a year, the same amount F1 brings in.

With NFR in town for 10 days, everyone’s involved. Everyone’s involved. OK, South Point makes money. Excalibur makes money. I make money. The shows make money. Trump Tower makes money.

It’s spread throughout the tourist community, where F1 doesn’t. And a lot of people, as they’re exiting Vegas, are saying “Goodbye, Vegas. This was it.”

The mess, the chaos, everything—it was the last straw. Which brings me to last year, when MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle made this “amazing” announcement that he finally “gets it.”

Yeah, okay. He basically admitted that maybe a $26 bottle of water or an $18 coffee is a little overboard. His big move to show they “hear us” was giving locals free parking... but only for 90 days. Why not just make parking free? Why not get rid of the resort fee?

You guys started this. And by the way, his promise to make “adjustments” really only happened at Excalibur and Luxor, not everywhere else. Then, in the same announcement, he actually tried to claim that their greed isn’t the only thing driving their numbers down.

Yes, it is.

He tries ot push the blame onto other things. He tried to blame politics. He tried to blame the Canadian dollar and blah, blah, blah. Again, NFR proved that completely wrong. NFR proved all of those excuses wrong, completely blew his excuses right out of the water.

Sorry, Bill, your greed is what is driving this tourist stampede to the exit.

Canadians showed up in huge droves, even with an equestrian crisis and a quarantine in place. They still showed up in massive droves. They still spent a ton of money here.

The Tourist number dropping is 99% due to MGM and Caesars’ greed. Pure and simple. And the tourists are going online and going, “hey, Vegas, no more. I’m done. We’re out of here.”

Blame whatever you want. But it sits on the feet of MGM and Caesars and their desire to just gouge the tourists as much as possible. So, yeah, free parking for 90 days if you’re a local here.

The baseball stadium is a money pit.

That’s why the movie was made. Baseball is just a huge money pit. They are still having some financial issues.

When they’re questioned on it, they kind of back off and maybe, you know, everything’s fine, everything’s fine, blah, blah, blah. All right. Right now, they’re having a trademark issue.

And then if you look on the corner of Tropicana and the Strip, there’s a sign there from Bally’s who is leasing the land going, “hey, we’re looking for companies to come in to the entertainment zone that we’re going to build there because we really don’t think we’re going to be able to afford to build a hotel there. But we want this entertainment zone.” Basically, what they’re looking for is investors to pay them to build the entertainment zone.

They don’t have the money. And it’s been proven in other cities that Bally’s is broke and they’re looking for handouts. They’re looking for other companies to fund their projects.

Kind of like “let us put our name on it, but we’re going to use your money.” All right. Yeah, yeah.

This baseball stadium is going to be just bad, just bad. All right. And of course, once in a while, the NBA basketball pops up, and apparently, everyone forgot what the 2007 All-Star game did to the Vegas economy.

Yeah, you know, for those of us who live through that, we are the ones going, oh, hell no. The NBA shouldn’t cannot come to Vegas. We do not need the trash that it brings.

And the 2007 All-Star game that was held here proved it. All right. I can get into that in a really long video. But OK, just no.

And then we have Brightline West, the high-speed rail going from close to L.A. to Las Vegas.

They are starting to build the track infrastructure. They are building a parking lot station here in Las Vegas. I’m not sure what they’re doing in Cucamonga out there, but unfortunately, they’re still saying the opening day is probably late 2028, early 2029.

So, and finally, my favorite little project, The Vegas loop, the tunnel system that the Elon Musk Boring Company is building. They should have a couple more stations opening in the next couple of weeks, probably the next 60 days. The connection to the airport will be complete.

They’re actually building two stations that will provide you with a connection to the airport. The first one should open at the same time as the Virgin station, which will open later this month, probably early next month. Unless there’s a delay for some reason, but still.

And then from there, they are tunneling to Allegiant Stadium. They’re going to start a tunnel to downtown. So that’s going to look good.

So, yep, there it is. I think I got caught up on everything. Our next big, big event in town here, of course, will be the Super Bowl.

More people usually come here for Super Bowl weekend and actually go to the host city.

If you think I missed anything, drop me a line at thevegastourist@gmail.com or leave me a comment.

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I am Mark Anthony. I am The Vegas Tourist, and I will see you on the next Podcast.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! So say a lot of people. There is no denying that Las Vegas tourism is way down and doesn't look like it will be coming back anytime soon. The sad thing is that it's not by accident.

So who do we blame and how do we fix it?
In my mind, I mostly blame the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) and its CEO, Steve Hill, who has no love for the average tourist.

Here is the video I referenced in the podcast:
Las Vegas is Empty on Purpose: CEO Reveals the Shocking Truth

I also talk about the Vegas Loop and its airport connection, as well as the baseball stadium debacle.

Let me know what you think.

Mark Anthony
The Vegas Tourist

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P.S. Check out our Vegas Survival Kit, featuring chargers, cooling gear, and more, which is a must-have before your flight. Click here to pack smarter

P.S.S. Have you booked a tour yet? Future you will thank you for saving the hassle! Click to Book

John talked about what we often call “Old Vegas”, that time before we became this metropolis I call home. Then onto Ralph Englestad and the Imperial Palace. We talk about the man, the hotel, his philanthropy, and the car collection.

The podcast originally ran over two hours long (2:45), but I was able to condense it to one hour and forty-five minutes. A bonus video is to be released later. My longest podcast yet!

We talk about the good, the bad, some dirt, name-dropping, and all that. We even discuss the infamous “Hitler Car” display controversy. (or was it??)

John makes some good points on how Raphael’s contribution to the modern Las Vegas is often overlooked. He built numerous buildings, established a philanthropy through his foundation, and played a key role in developing the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

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Leaha and her husband, Ken, are big fans of the “let’s get out of Vegas and have fun” type of person.

In this episode, we talk about tours, publishing, and the wild ride from being a Vegas tourist to being a Las Vegas local.

And she finally answers the one question I’m sure you’ve asked yourself many times while walking the Strip, but never had an answer to.

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Connect with Leah:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leahfgorman_/
Website: https://proofreadingandmore.com/

Her Book:
The Amazing Adventures of Pirate Jack: The Cave of Hidden Treasure
Find it on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4fPNKxw

Pink Jeep Adventure Tours:
https://www.pinkadventuretours.com/las-vegas-tours

Be My Guest
If you think you would make a great guest on my podcast, drop me a note.
Email: thevegastourist(@)gmail.com

First, we’ll discuss the devastating wildfires near the Grand Canyon and the ongoing efforts to contain the blaze and the tragic loss of the lodge at the North Rim.

Then, we’ll shift gears to the Strip, breaking down the latest progress and potential snags with the Hard Rock’s massive remodel and the construction of the new guitar-shaped hotel tower.

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Finally, Mark goes on a trademark rant about the F1 race, dissecting how its extended setup and takedown periods are wreaking havoc on local businesses and tourism. Tune in for a no-holds-barred look at the latest Vegas news!

This one was actually a livestream, so forgive the horseshit audio!

First Posted on YouTube February 12, 2024