Macau launch for the massive Las Vegas of the East

Through the opening of the Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel yesterday as the first phase of the giant Cotai Strip project, Nevada-based Las Vegas Sands Corp has introduced a new chapter of tourism development to Asia. “We spend billions of dollars because we know demand will be here. This will be the meeting place of East and West. All business will come here,” said Sheldon G Adelson, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp at press conference attended by nearly 1,000 reporters from all over the world. “There had never been an entertainment centre in Asia,” he said. “All entertainment elements are here in a single building. We reproduce a capital of entertainment in Asia for Asia.”

He added that with 26 million visitors expected annually, mainly from China, he was afraid that the hotel rooms would be inadequate for the huge demand.

Still, he believed that there should not be a race for convention and exhibition properties in other countries as there are many meetings going on in this part of the world.

Notably, the Macau property would not compete with the new one to be opened soon in Singapore, due to growing demand for convention and exhibition areas and accommodation in the region.

On completion, the Cotai Strip will have 20,000 guest rooms from 14 hotel brands including Four Seasons, St Regis, Shangri-La, Hilton, Raffles and Conrad which should materialise in the next 24 to 30 months.

The site will offer more than 3 million square feet of retail space, nearly 30,000 seats for live entertainment and more than 1,000 meeting rooms. Each hotel will have its own casino and entertainment centres.

Dubbed as the largest single-structure hotel in Asia and the second-largest building in the world, the Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel alone offers 3,000 all-suite guest rooms with one million square feet of air-conditioned retail space along the Venetian-styled canal and 1.2 million square feet of convention and exhibition area. The casino floor, covering 550,000 square feet, is the largest in the world and is home to 870 table games and more than 3,400 slot machines.

In the coming weeks, the hotel will play host to a pair of NBA exhibition games and a match-up of tennis greats Roger Federer and Pete Sampras. A US$150 million (Bt5.1 billion) show will also be staged soon.

While it has taken 76 years to build Las Vegas into a successful destination, Las Vegas Sands hopes to make it happen here in a matter of a few years.

Las Vegas Sands president and COO William Weidner added that rather than being a threat to existing developments, the Cotai Strip would be complementary to those with fully booked space in Hong Kong and the entire region.

He also foresaw huge growth in the gaming industry, which will draw visitors from Japan, Korea and other countries.

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