World's Largest Casino In Macau
In fact, it’s the world’s largest casino complex. Such is the success of the place, a veritable goldmine for its owners, that The Venetian is arguably more famous than Macau itself. Adorned with decadent interiors styled on gilded, old world Europe, it’s loud and proud of being gaudy and shouts it from every corner. Macau, the world's biggest casino hub, is set to welcome an influx of gamblers after China on Tuesday announced that tourist visas, through which the majority of visitors enter the Chinese territory, would be reinstated for all provinces from Sept. Casino executives and investors have been eagerly awaiting the announcement as a catalyst to reviving gaming revenue, which has slumped since.
World's Largest Casino In Macauu
| The Venetian Macao 澳門威尼斯人 | |
|---|---|
| Location | Macau |
| Address | Cotai Strip |
| Opening date | 28 August 2007; 13 years ago |
| Theme | Venice, Italy |
| No. of rooms | 3,000 |
| Total gaming space | 550,000 sq ft (51,000 m2) |
| Signature attractions | Cotai Arena |
| Casino type | Land-based |
| Owner | Las Vegas Sands |
| Architect | Aedas and HKS, Inc. |
| Website | Venetian Macao |
| The Venetian Macao | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 澳門威尼斯人 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 澳门威尼斯人 | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
The Venetian Macao (Chinese: 澳門威尼斯人) is a luxury hotel and casinoresort in Macau owned by the American Las Vegas Sands company. The Venetian is a 39-story,[1] casino hotel on the Cotai Strip in Macau. The 10,500,000-square-foot (980,000 m2) Venetian Macao is modeled on its sister casino resort The Venetian Las Vegas. The Venetian Macao is the 2nd largest casino in the world, the largest single structure hotel building in Asia, and also the seventh-largest building in the world by floor area.
The main hotel tower was finished in July 2007 and the resort officially opened on 28 August 2007.[2] The resort has 3,000 suites, 1,200,000 sq ft (110,000 m2) of convention space, 1,600,000 sq ft (150,000 m2) of retail, 550,000 square feet (51,000 m2) of casino space – with 3,400 slot machines and 800 gambling tables and the 15,000-seat Cotai Arena for entertainment and sports events.
The lead architect for the Venetian Macao were Aedas and HKS, Inc. joint venture, who were responsible for the design, coordination and implementation of the project on site.[3]
Casino[edit]
The casino measures 546,000 sq ft (50,700 m2).[4] It is further divided into four themed gaming areas—namely, Golden Fish, Imperial House, Red Dragon and Phoenix. The casino consists of over 6,000 slot machines and 800 gambling tables.
The hotel offers a club called Paiza Club which caters to premium guests. The club comes with its own entrance, lobby, reception, and guest lifts to the rooms. The gaming area of the Paiza Club is divided into individual private gaming rooms each named for notable Asian cities and regions such as Yunnan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.The guests of the club have exclusive access to the club dining outlet, the Paiza Club Dining & Lounge, which is open 24 hours a day.
Design[edit]
The hotel uses Venice, Italy, as its design inspiration and features architectural replicas of various Venetian landmarks.
Accommodation[edit]
The hotel tower offers 2,905 suites. The accommodation floors go from level 7 up to level 38. These floors are served by guest lifts.
Paiza suites are reserved for premium guests. The largest is the Presidente, a 12-bay suite with four bedrooms.
Entertainment[edit]
The Cotai Arena (formerly known as the Venetian Arena) is an indoor arena, opened in 2007 with a seating capacity of 15,000. It hosts sporting events such as basketball, tennis, and boxing, as well as concerts and international televised awards shows.
Zaia[edit]
Zaia, a 90-minute stage production by the Canadian entertainment company Cirque du Soleil, ran between 27 August 2008 and 19 February 2012 in a custom-built theater at the Venetian Macao. The show, directed by Neilson Vignola and Gilles Maheu, featured a cast of 75 circus artists.[5] The show's theme was a young girl's perception of the stars and planets, space and infinity, populated by otherworldly creatures. The theater housing the performance seated 1,800 spectators at a time.[6]
Controversies[edit]
On 12 November 2008, the gates were locked to the construction labour force from a variety of Asian countries as projects were suspended. Hsin Chong, the project manager for the Venetian, laid off approximately 400 staff. As many workers had been there for less than two years, no severance was due. The next day, Sands' president for Asia announced that up to 11,000 workers would be losing their jobs as the company was halting building projects in Macao.[7]
In 2010 the Chinese press reported that as part of a 'sex-trade crackdown' authorities had found more than 100 prostitutes inside the casino.[8]
In early 2011 the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission initiated an investigation into the Las Vegas Sands Corporation with respect to the compliance of its Macao properties with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.[8]
See also[edit]
- Cotai Jet – owned by The Venetian Macao, operating high speed Catamaran ferry services between Taipa Temporary Ferry Terminal and Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal, Hong Kong
World Biggest Casino Macau
References[edit]
- ^'The Venetian'. Emporis.com. Retrieved 23 June 2014.
- ^'Venetian Macao press release'. Phx.corporate-ir.net. 27 August 2007. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^'case study'(PDF). gillespieuk.co.uk.
- ^'Top-10 Largest Casinos'. Casino City Times. 10 December 2007.
- ^'The first permanent Cirque du Soleil show in Asia celebrates its world premiere on August 28 at the Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel – Written and directed by Gilles Maheu'. Cirque du Soleil – Press Release. Retrieved 8 February 2011.
- ^'Zaia: The Show – Theater'. Cirque du Soleil. Retrieved 8 February 2011.
- ^'Up to 11,000 Macau workers to lose jobs'. The Standard. Archived from the original on 3 February 2009.
- ^ abBrian Ross (27 January 2012), 'Bribes, Chinese Mob Ties Alleged at Casino of Gingrich Money Man'. ABC News.
External links[edit]
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Venetian Macao. |
Coordinates: 22°8′55″N113°33′38″E / 22.14861°N 113.56056°E
Las Vegas has long been known as the casino capital of the world. The bright lights of the Vegas Strip attract around 36.7million tourists from around the world, each keen to try their luck in any one of 74 casinos in Vegas, 29 of which are on the world famous Las Vegas Strip. And whereas you´re more likely to hear the shouts of gamblers crowded around a shooter on the craps table in Vegas, head to Macau (or Macao) and you´ll probably be listening to the Sic Bo bell and shouts of Cantonese players as they bet on this ancient Chinese dice game.
But in recent times, a young pretender to the throne has shown up in the casino world and in 2006, the previously little-known enclave of Macau has powered past Vegas as the world’s biggest casino centre and is showing no signs of letting Vegas take back the crown that it held for so long.
The small region in the south-east of China, formally a Portuguese colony, has long had gambling at the heart of its economy and, like Vegas, benefits from the fact that gambling remains either illegal or severely restricted in many surrounding regions, most notably China itself. The Macau Casino complex is bigger than Las Vegas and that’s before they have built the bridge fm Hong Kong and Zhuhai.
World's Largest Casino In Macau World
As a result, some 10.5m visitors from China alone and many more from across Asia flock to Macau, pumping a staggering $6.8bn (£3.6bn) into the local economy every year – some $200m more than the total casino turnover in Las Vegas. The figure is even more amazing when you consider that Macau has no online casino economy and 46 fewer casinos.
The casino boom for Macau came in 2001 when the territory left Portuguese rule and was handed back to China. A year later, competition rules that meant that certain operators held a monopoly on casinos in the region were relaxed, opening the floodgates for foreign operators to move in and start building Macau into the tourist and gaming metropolis that it is today.
World's Largest Casino In Macau China
MGM Grand and Wynn, both big names on the Vegas Strip, were amongst the first to build glitzy palaces there and Macau (or Macao to give it is alternative spelling) even has its very own Venetian, currently the largest of 28 casinos currently operating in the country, and in the record books as the largest casino on the planet.
The Venetian isn’t going to hold on to the title for long however. There´s a new giant in town with the $1bn, 420,000sq ft ‘City of Dreams’ complex, the first ever underwater casino, due to open later this year. Once that has been completed, work is then expected to start on the next big project – the Macau Studio City which, when built, will boast 500,000sq ft of casino space. That means that by the end of this year, Macau could boast more than 2.3m sq-ft of casino space and as many as 11,000 slot machines – more than double the amount currently found in Las Vegas.
World's Largest Casino In Macau Casinos
It’s certainly enough to get casino bosses and tourism officials in Nevada panicking, with Las Vegas currently investing around $20m and working to attract major events such as big-time boxing to the Strip in an attempt to retain its casino crown. We’ll have to wait to see if the tactic works but with many other Asian regions looking enviously at Macau’s success, Vegas could end up with even more competition yet.