Wendy Ebbing

From Desert to Touristic Metropolitan: How and Why Did Las Vegas' Tourism Develop During the Mafia Era? Wendy Ebbing

Las Vegas is such an extraordinary destination. Research has shown that the city of Las Vegas was developed mainly with thanks to the mafia. Las Vegas has had an extraordinary way of developing. The city did not develop, for example by the means of the Destination Life Cycle from Butler, 1980 nor did it develop by the means of the broad context model by Weaver, 2000. And also the government had nothing to do with Las Vegas' tourism development. Organized crime was the factor that developed Las Vegas. It was not until New York City mafia boss Meyer Lansky sent well-known gangster Bugsy Siegel to Las Vegas that Las Vegas became a popular destination. With Siegel's imagination and organizational skills and the Mafia's money, the first gambling palace, The Flamingo, was the first of many gangster- financed gambling hotels in Las Vegas. The mafia were also the ones to introduce entertainment into the city with icons like The Rat Pack, Elvis, Liberace and Wayne Newton. The mafia turned the Las Vegas Boulevard into the glitzy and glamorous Las Vegas Strip.