If there needs to be a face put on the downturn and questionable priorities in Las Vegas tourism, it would have to be Steve Hill.
The current CEO of the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority (LVCVA) has overseen an era defined by prioritizing massive, expensive projects and political cronyism over the fundamental health of our tourism community.
I will be writing more in the near future on why Steve Hill needs to be fired and the LVCVA needs to be defunded, while a new agency that actually delivers for the Las Vegas Tourism Community—not just one person’s friends and pet projects—must be created.
Our Focus Today
But for now, let’s focus on a crisis where a failure of leadership—a void that future CEO Hill did not step up to fill—really came to light on an international stage: October 1, 2017. AKA, the 1 October Massacre.
When the city needed a visible, unwavering tourism advocate most, the top echelons of our destination marketing organization were silent and invisible to the global media. While the CEO at the time, Rossi Ralenkotter, was the official face of the LVCVA, Steve Hill was a highly-placed and influential figure in the city’s power structure.
He was widely known as the heir-apparent and the architect of key infrastructure deals like the Stadium Authority. Hill was already a formidable, public-facing leader for the city’s future. Yet, when the international media descended, and our number one employment and income streams were jeopardized, a strong, unified voice of tourism leadership was nowhere to be found.
This was a moment for the LVCVA’s leadership to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with first responders and local officials, not in the background, but front and center. The message needed to be immediate, clear, and powerful:
Empathy and Solidarity: A deep, visible mourning for the victims, showing the world that Las Vegas is a community first.
Unwavering Strength: An immediate assurance that this isolated act of evil would not define the city. The message needed to be, “We are Vegas Strong. Our lights are still on, our doors are still open, and we will not be beaten.”
Proactive Reassurance: A face that could look directly into the camera and tell travelers, meeting planners, and investors: “We are committed to safety, we are resilient, and your booking is an act of supporting this community.”
Instead, the LVCVA’s deafening silence was a catastrophic surrender of the narrative. Without a leader to project a unified message, the global media was free to indulge its fascination with death and destruction, branding our city as a victim rather than a survivor.
So the news was dominated by local law enforcement and political figures, while the official entity responsible for defending our economy—the LVCVA—was notably absent from the initial, critical media surge.
The Failure
The failure of a high-profile, influential tourism leader (like Hill, the man being groomed for the top job) to seize that megaphone meant that the initial conversation wasn’t about our strength, but about the tragedy itself. It left a leadership void that contributed to the predictable downturn in visitation and occupancy in the months (years?) that followed.
This moment of international crisis exposed the LVCVA’s internal failure to produce a visible, prepared, and powerful leader for the global stage. It showed a focus on bureaucracy and internal politics when the mission should have been singular: defending the “Las Vegas” brand and the livelihoods of half a million Nevadans.
This absence on October 1st, 2017, foreshadowed a tenure—the one Steve Hill now leads—that seems more concerned with spending hundreds of millions on new projects than on the fundamental strength and reputation of our destination. For a leader whose entire career is built on the strength of Las Vegas tourism, his absence, or the absence of a strong LVCVA voice, during the city’s darkest hour, is an unignorable stain.
LVCVA is Not Working for us
It’s one more piece of evidence that the LVCVA, under its current structure, is not serving the community. It’s time for new leadership and a new, accountable agency.
The city deserves a tourism head who is ready to be front and center for all the media to see and hear that all of Las Vegas tourism is still here, strong, and will always come back—because their job literally depends on it.
Your Thoughts??
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