From Oakland to Vegas? The NFL Raiders team filed paperwork Thursday for the team to move from the East Bay to Sin City.
And with so many of the team’s fans in Hawaii, how could this affect future travel plans to Las Vegas?
The move won’t be official until 24 of the 32 NFL franchise owners approve the relocation, and even then, it could take a few years before the future Las Vegas Raiders officially start playing.
For regular visitors from the islands, an NFL game would be one more thing to check out while in Vegas. But could the attraction of an NFL team raise your overall trip costs?
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed a bill in October 2016 that would raise hotel taxes in Las Vegas to help build a stadium for the Raiders. It could cost nearly $2 billion to build that stadium, and to help fund that, officials say they’d need to raise $750 million in hotel room taxes that will be paid by visitors, like those from Hawaii.
Bradley Bal of Kahului says “here in Hawaii, we do have a lot of Raider fans. I’m sure Vegas would have a lot of revenue from us Hawaii residents to watch the games there and they can kill two birds with one stone, watch the game and gamble!”
John DeFreitas at Panda Travel says he could see local residents plan more weekend trips to Sin City. “People end up doing 3, 4, 5 nights to Vegas, that’s the typical trip. You figure an NFL game’s going to be on a Sunday, so it would be nice to leave on a Wednesday, go for the weekend, and come back.”
And a spokesperson with Vacations Hawaii says there should be no shortage of rooms available. “Boyd Gaming just acquired two new properties in Vegas, so we got a lot more capacity to help with that.”