Monday, April 26, 2010

Las Vegas - the 26th Most Fun City?

It is routinely referred to as "The Entertainment Capital of the World" but apparently Las Vegas is only America's 26th best city to have fun in.

This according to a study by Portfolio magazine. Now, I can understand that Las Vegas doesn't have some "fun" things that other cities may have. No professional sports teams. No water sports or skiing unless you want to make a day trip out of it. Vegas is probably also lacking in the "culture" department (although they were ranked a respectable 29th in that category).

Vegas got ripped off in a few categories that just don't make much sense though. 81st in shopping? You can pretty much find any high end retailer on the Strip, and a couple of different outlet centers nearby. 44th in food and drink? Doesn't every top chef in the world have a restaurant in Vegas? 88th in Low-Impact sports (like golf)? I'm pretty sure that Las Vegas has a ton of golf courses.

One possibility is that they weren't counting the Strip, because most of it isn't actually in the city limits of Las Vegas... but they list the population as 1.8 million, when the population inside the city limits is only 550,000 so that leads me to believe the whole metro area was considered.

Another thing that I thought of was maybe they were counting the "locals" experience and so they left out many of the "tourist" attractions. That kind of makes sense, but there's nothing stopping a local from taking advantage of the great restaurants and other fun things that are available to tourists.

Source: Portfolio.com