In the 20 years that Erika Swanton has worked in retail on the Las Vegas Strip , she has never known summer business to be so slow.

The number of customers visiting the skincare shop she works in has halved. “I’ve never seen the economy like this, not even in 2008,” she says.

“People used to come to Las Vegas and spend money. Now they’re scared to spend.”

Vegas has always been a place of extravagance, a luxury destination where tourists can embrace the carefree hedonism of gambling, boozing and spending.

But now Sin City tourism is in a slump.

Visitor numbers fell by 11.3pc year-on-year in June and were down by 7.3pc across the first six months of the year. In percentage terms, that is equivalent to the drop recorded over the entirety of the two-year period during the global recessi

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