It's still Vegas, baby, but Sin City wants you to know it's serious about business, too

Las Vegas, where "What happens here stays here," is trying to market itself as a serious destination as more companies -- such as banks receiving federal bailouts -- have canceled meetings and conventions.

A full-page ad in a back page of the March 23 and 30 BusinessWeek magazine describes how a "prominent financial firm canceled a meeting in Sin City and moved it elsewhere because of the perception that Las Vegas is a 'fun' trip or an unwarranted extravagance." The ad is paid for by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

"We admit, Las Vegas is more fun than any other place on the planet," the ad continues. "Guilty as charged. However, serious business is done here every day."

So forget the idea that Vegas is a place to hide out, have fun and not have to tell anyone about it. For the folks at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which moved its three-day conference from the Las Vegas Strip to San Francisco in February, the ads such as this one aren't meant for them, or for that matter any of the other companies accepting $10 billion in federal bailout funds, as Goldman did.

Here's a video of an ad that Goldman, Wells Fargo & Co., and other such firms might not want to show their employees after canceling company trips to Las Vegas: