Industry and Workforce Overview

Industry and Workforce Overview

With the star power of Las Vegas and the diversity of natural settings, Hospitality and Tourism is the state’s iconic consumption-oriented industry and a major economic engine that creates tens of thousands of jobs for Nevadans.

Given its leadership, Nevada is focused on leveraging its intellectual capital in hospitality, tourism and related leisure services to diversify the traditionally service-oriented industry into higher-value and innovative activities that would create higher-skill and higher-paying jobs, expand the state’s exports, and even open up new opportunities for IT-based activities.

Central to that goal, the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, ranks as one of the country’s top two college hospitality programs. The school’s faculty has written more than 30 textbooks that are used in hospitality programs all over the world.

With more than 150,000 hotel rooms, Las Vegas is the ideal living laboratory for the study of hospitality. Programs include hotel administration; culinary arts and beverage management; service, lodging and resort management; recreation; professional golf management; meetings and events management; and sports and leisure services.

The research institutes, centers, journals and data collections of the College of Hotel Administration make it a trusted resource of hospitality and gaming information that people and governments draw on as they research the best policies and practices for their states or countries.