Black Friday means the same thing in Las Vegas as elsewhere, at least for locals. On Thursday, the newspaper was a tempting package of advertisements for all of today's sales, premiums and rebates. I've already been to Circuit City this morning and wonder if all the sale hype is working out as planned for these stores. The lines of people waiting to check out snaked through large chunks of the retail sections. Sure the sales were amazing, but even at 8 a.m., it was too crowded to browse at all. Customers seemed to just be grabbing the spectacular sale item of their choice and picking a line. I decided I didn't have that much time to save $30 after mail-in rebate and headed right home.

But this made me wonder about the tourist retail centers at resorts like Caesars, Venetian and Aladdin. No one ever says, "Let's go to Vegas for the sales." This is a slow time of year so it would sure make sense to have big sales, sales large enough to draw tourists. After all, Las Vegas tourism officials and politicians brag all the time about our world-class shopping and like to point out that shopping has become a major activity for tourists.

While I am sure individual stores have sales, there has really been no effort worth mentioning to create a special shopping day out of Black Friday with big sales and events in the major tourist retail spaces. Why is that?