By Jon Mooallem

Rossi Ralenkotter devoted his career to promoting what he called "the most exciting city in the universe," spending 45 years at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, a governmental organization funded by hotel-room taxes, responsible for marketing the region as a destination for tourists and business travelers. (The LVCVA also owns the Las Vegas Convention Center.)

Ralenkotter started at the LVCVA as a newly minted M.B.A. in 1973 and ascended to serve as its president and CEO for 14 years, becoming one of the U.S. travel industry's most distinguished leaders. His retirement during an ethics scandal, in 2018, seemingly did little to diminish his stature in the long run.

When Ralenkotter died Oct. 10 at 78 from cancer, which he had for 16 years, former Las Vegas mayors Oscar Goodman and Carolyn Goodman said in a joint statement, "No one worked harder than Rossi Ralenkotter to make us what we've become," and U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D., Nev.) called him "a true Nevadan whose love of Las Vegas helped propel the city to the travel and tourism capital it is today."

Ralenkotter had already been at the job for three decades when, in 2003, he oversaw a new marketing campaign whose slogan came to define the city: "What Happens Here, Stays Here."

At the time, hotel and casino owners had just spent roughly a decade investing in breathtaking architecture, famous restaurateurs and luxury shopping, elevating Las Vegas to a new level of excellence. And yet, Ralenkotter understood, it was the same kind of excellence found in lots of other destinations. "What Happens Here, Stays Here" wouldn't emphasize any of that, focusing instead on quieter, quirkier stories of mild-mannered people letting down their hair in Vegas, pinpointing something deeper and more singular that the city had to offer.

"It was an extremely significant departure, not just for marketing Las Vegas, but for tourism campaigns in general," recalled Billy Vassiliadis, whose firm R & R Partners developed the campaign for the LVCVA. "But Rossi embraced it and owned it -- it made sense to him."

Ralenkotter told the Las Vegas Weekly, "People come to Las Vegas to have a great time and not worry about anything." And so, the campaign would sell "adult freedom," which "is defined by every individual differently. That's part of what makes the brand so effective," Ralenkotter went on. "To some consumers, it means deviating from their diet. To others, it means spending extra money on a pair of shoes or dress. And to others, it means having a spa day and dressing up and going to a nightclub."

Vassiliadis, who became a close friend, described Ralenkotter as a traditionalist: good family man, devout Catholic, not a gambler himself; even in their last conversation, Vassiliadis noted, Ralenkotter was still griping about baseball's designated-hitter rule.

In this way, Vassiliadis said, "He was a walking, talking contradiction, personality-wise: fairly conventional as a human being, but as a professional, he was very open to new ideas."

Diversifying the city's appeal

During Ralenkotter's long stewardship of Las Vegas's brand, the number of annual visitors to the city quintupled, to a record 42.9 million in 2016.

"We became successful as a destination because we mean so many things to so many people," he told the Nevada Independent.

That diversification of Las Vegas's appeal was strategic and hard-won. In 1985, Ralenkotter was part of a group responsible for luring the National Finals Rodeo to the city, bringing in tourists during the annual fallow period between Thanksgiving and New Year's. He led the team that first drew the International Consumer Electronic Show, known as CES, to Las Vegas in 1978, spurring the city's growth as a leading destination for conferences and trade shows.

And he helped bring numerous sporting events to town, like college football's annual Las Vegas Bowl, the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, Nascar races and the PGA Tour. As sports leagues dropped their long-held aversion to being associated with gambling, the NHL's Vegas Golden Knights made their debut in the city in 2017, and the NFL's Raiders relocated to Las Vegas in 2020; baseball's Athletics will move there in 2028, and the NBA plays games there. In September, the Las Vegas Aviators, one of two minor-league baseball teams that Ralenkotter was instrumental in bringing to the city, honored him with his own bobblehead night.

"Las Vegas never sits still," Ralenkotter told the Las Vegas Weekly -- the city kept stretching and morphing. But so did the world around it, and Ralenkotter became known for fleetly adapting the LVCVA's marketing tactics and messaging during periods of uncertainty or national anxiety -- from the outbreak of the first Gulf War, to the 2008 financial crisis, to the aftermath of the 2017 mass shooting in the city, in which 58 people were killed. After 9/11, Travel Agent magazine named Ralenkotter a "Destination Person of the Year," one of many elite industry honors he would receive during his career. Under his leadership, the magazine wrote, "Las Vegas was the first to come out with a healing message that turned a visit into a necessary tonic, rather than an elective fantasyland."

In a video celebrating Ralenkotter's induction into the Nevada Business Hall of Fame in 2016, the late U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev) explained: "The thing that Rossi's brought to southern Nevada hospitality is stability.... Everybody looks at him saying, 'Well, he's still there -- that means Las Vegas is going to be OK.' "

Misuse of gift cards

Ralenkotter was born April 4, 1947, in Covington, Ky., outside Cincinnati, and moved to Las Vegas at age 4, where his father, Donald, became a craps dealer at the Las Vegas Sands.

A high-school baseball star, Ralenkotter dreamed of playing shortstop for the Reds, but went on to study marketing at Arizona State University instead, graduating in 1969, then earned an M.B.A. at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 1973. In 1989, he married Mary Jo (Casey) Ralenkotter, whom he'd first met in high school, and they raised five children from previous marriages together. (Ralenkotter is survived by his wife, their children and 10 grandchildren.)

Immediately upon joining the LVCVA in 1973, then known as the Las Vegas Convention Bureau, Ralenkotter began conducting the organization's first-ever market research, issuing a bulletin of exhaustive data on travelers to the city and their needs. He then launched Vegas's annual Visitor Profile Survey, still a vital document for the industry, now in its 50th year.

Ralenkotter served as the LVCVA's President and CEO for 14 years, retiring in 2018, amid investigations, by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the state, into his misuse of $17,000 worth of promotional gift cards given to the agency by Southwest Airlines. Ralenkotter claimed he hadn't knowingly done anything wrong, eventually paid back the value of those cards to the LVCVA and pleaded to a misdemeanor charge. He also paid a roughly $25,000 fine to the state in a separate ethics investigation.

Voting to accept his retirement, the LVCVA board sent him off with a $455,000 financial package and a hearty round of applause. Covering Ralenkotter's death in his newsletter, Nevada journalist Jon Ralston wrote, "Ralenkotter did screw up on those Southwest gift cards, but the way he was hounded out of his job as if it was tourism Watergate was shameful."

"I'm not ashamed of anything I did," Ralenkotter told KLAS-TV 8 in August, before entering hospice. "You've got to look at what was the total impact of this person, what was the total impact of this organization over 45 years -- and I'll stand up with mine against anything."

He periodically mentioned in interviews through the years that he had turned down offers to work elsewhere. As he explained to Gaming Wire in 2003, "For all these years, to be able to market and sell my hometown has been both a challenge and a joy. This is where I've grown up, my family is here...and this is where I want to be."

Write to Jon Mooallem at jon.mooallem@wsj.com

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October 30, 2025 15:52 ET (19:52 GMT)

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