Rossi Ralenkotter loved his family. He loved Las Vegas, too. For newcomers in Southern Nevada or the hospitality industry, you may not recognize the name. You should. And you should know what he did for the Las Vegas travel and tourism industry.

More than anything, Rossi — who died Oct. 10 at age 78 — helped Las Vegas thrive during his 45-year career at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. He was a leader who organized the collective efforts to brand Las Vegas and helped create the iconic “What Happens Here, Stays Here” campaign. Today, the initiatives and programming used to market Las Vegas are the normal course of business. Rossi established or helped build many of those programs, and all these initiatives were based on research where he got his start at the convention auth

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