As someone outside the US, I think the cost of Las Vegas is only a small aspect of the slump. When you factor in the cost of flights and other destinations you may be visiting, Vegas being expensive is often only driving up the total trip cost proportionately.
There have been several situations in the last 12 months where the desire to go to the US (and Vegas, in this case, for conferences) just isn't there, as we are hearing so many terrible stories about travellers being harassed or unwelcome when trying to enter the US, due to the current Government. Anecdotally, this has been the reason I've heard from Canadians who are also considering travel to the same conferences.
The Beatles (especially John) also hated the tedium of re-recording vocals to layer them, as is common in audio production to improve the impact of vocals in recordings.
Their engineer ended up coming up with a technical approach we call ADT (Automatic double-tracking) to artificially duplicate and layer the vocals without requiring the artist(s) to re-record vocals.
There have been several situations in the last 12 months where the desire to go to the US (and Vegas, in this case, for conferences) just isn't there, as we are hearing so many terrible stories about travellers being harassed or unwelcome when trying to enter the US, due to the current Government. Anecdotally, this has been the reason I've heard from Canadians who are also considering travel to the same conferences.