Las Vegas has become 'old hat' 'yesterday's news'

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/II05Cb01.html


The casino that ate Macau


When the Venetian Macau, the world's largest casino, opened its doors last week, Macau completed its transformation from colonial backwater to the Las Vegas of Asia. And, going strictly by the numbers, that transformation has been a winning bet.

In the space of five years, thanks to its booming gambling industry, Macau has overtaken the Las Vegas Strip as the richest gambling market on the planet. Consequently, the city's economy is surging, with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) surpassing neighboring Hong Kong's last year.

-snip-

The Venetian colossus has been jokingly called "the casino that ate Macau" by William Weidner, president of Las Vegas Sands Corp, which built the mega-resort. For critics of Macau's single-minded growth strategy, Weidner's joke stands as a dark metaphor for the decline of other sectors of the economy in favor of gambling and for the social ills that have accompanied that decline.

-snip-

Ten times the size of the Sands, the 32-story Venetian boasts 850 gaming tables, 4,100 slot machines and 3,000 hotel suites - which in a single day accounted for a 65% increase in five-star hotel rooms on offer in the city. Add to that a 93,000-square-meter shopping plaza for 350 different retailers and a sports stadium that seats 15,000, not to mention 111,000 square meters of convention space.

In an attempt to re-create the charm and elegance of Venice, the resort will employ natty gondoliers to transport guests down canals that course through the largest single building in Asia. Indeed, the only building in the world larger than the Venetian was built to hold airplanes - the Boeing plant in Everett, Washington.

-snip - Macau citizens are not happy campers -
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the neo cons will never leave Iraq

[underpants]

1. The Asian "whales" no longer have to go to Vegas

I can imagine that that would hurt them quite deeply.

[aikoaiko]

2. The same owners...... I don't think they'll be hurt

Give a gambler two places to gamble and they gamble twice as much.

[DS1]

3. What do neocons in Iraq have to do with this?

[WinkyDink]

4. Like Macau is right around the block? Please.

[donsu]

5. figure in Dubai

nt

[WinkyDink]

6. Ordinary, average Americans visit Las Vegas. They aren't going to take the kids to Macau OR Dubai.

What would be the point? A slot machine doesn't look any different 4000 miles from home.

[LibertyLover]

7. Boy how things change

I was in Macau in 1980 and there was just one casino - it was old and redolent with the dreams of the Empire. A faded but still magnificent dowager. I gambled for the first time there - a few Hong Kong dollars in a slot machine - and lost. Aside from the casino, one of the biggest tourist draws was being able to walk up close to the boarder with the PRC. There were some rather nice souvenir stands there with some very nice jade. My mom got a very nice lavender jade pendent that I inherited on her death and wear occasionally.

[musette_sf]

8. don't forget to read Bob Herbert's column today

"City As Predator", re Las Vegas being the US epicenter of North American prostitution and sex trafficking.

"If you peel back the thin, supposedly sexy veneer of the commercial sex trade, you’ll quickly see the rotten inside, where females are bought, sold, raped, beaten, shamed and in many, many cases, physically and emotionally wrecked."

i'm giving the Times link but they still have that idiotic Times Select deal going. the column should be on the alternative sources soon.

http://tinyurl.com/2xumuq