Just 17 days after its grand opening on August 28, the Venetian Macao welcomed its millionth visitor. A true “veni, vidi, vici” story in the making? The whole gaming industry was watching from afar. Magnate Steve Wynn was one of the first to opt for a wait-and-see approach by delaying the expansion plans for his Diamond Suites in Macau. Others followed suit. A mixed wave of mild scepticism and careful optimism took over the prelude of what could come out of the grand opening of Asia’s largest gaming resort. At stake was a US$2.4 billion (£1.20 billion) bet – the price tag on the second biggest building in the world, just shy of one of Holland’s tulip growing facilities. Was Macao – a gambling-only destination – ready for the “integrated resort” approach? And was the current infrastructure ready to provide enough visitor flow to make the monolithic property profitable?

On V day, August 28, Las Vegas Sands chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson told journalist he considered the building – with 3,000 suites, 1.2 million square feet of convention and exhibition space, one million square feet of retail space and a 15,000-seat arena – “awfully inadequate to meet demand”. Was he right?

Even the most optimistic figures fell short of reality: “It would be fair to say that in order to make it viable, the Venetian is going to need 30,000 to 40,000 people walking through it each day. How are they going to get there? There’s no rail connection – you can’t even land helicopters there under the present system and let’s just say the airport isn’t exactly a well-oiled machine,” said one industry analyst prior to opening night. Only a fortnight and dimes after V day, the Venetian received its millionth visitor – almost double Macau’s total population, at slightly over 525,000 people. Opening night recorded more than 76,000 visitors, making its debut a landmark opening in hospitality and gaming history. Venetian Macao went on to reach the 170,000 visitor mark in its first weekend. Las Vegas Sands has then claimed to record daily visitor figures varying from 42,000 to 86,000.

The US $2.4 billion Venetian Macao is the largest single-structure hotel in Asia and to operate this mammoth LVS claims to have employed a little over 11,000 people – roughly five per cent of Macau’s workforce. The property features 1.2 million-square feet of meeting, convention and exhibition space, 3,000 all-suite guest rooms, an 1,800 seat theatre that will host a resident Cirque du Soleil show, and the 15,000-seat Venetian Arena. The casino floor, at 550,000 square feet, is also the largest in the world and is home to 870 table games and more than 3,400 slot machines. It also holds one million square feet of retail space at The Grand Canal Shoppes featuring all the big names: Vuitton, Dior, Valentino, Gucci, Prada, Versace, Lacroix, Armani and Shanghai Tang. Not all have opened but that hasn’t stoped shoppers exploring and riding gondolas in the mall’s three indoor canals.

But the trump up Venetian Macao’s sleeve is arguably its convention centre. LVS is known to have written the book on the gambling / convention complementary combination and is determined to make it work in Macau and help terraform the local market with the implementing of currently non-existent, non gaming business revenue – Las Vegas’ bread and butter.

With its debut the Venetian Macao will more than double MICE facilities in Macau, allowing for the destination to hold events of any size. LVS has announced bookings for over 44 corporate events in the following two years, including of course G2E Asia.

V day marked only the opening of the first phase of the Cotai Strip. Upon completion, the complex will hold about 20,000 rooms and over 10 hotels, all connected by enclosed pedestrian walkways, sporting a casino and their own meeting facilities, performance halls and retail space: Four Seasons, Sheraton, Shangrila, Traders, Hilton, Conrad, Fairmont, Raffles, Swiss Hotel, the InterContinental, Holiday Inn and the Cosmopolitan. First in line for operation is the 400 room / 600 serviced suites Four Seasons, followed by the largest Sheraton in the world and the largest hotel of the Starwood Group at 4,000 rooms and 140,000 square feet of meeting space. Then there’s the St. Regis, featuring around 450 rooms and 400 butler-served residential units. Macao’s very own Shangri-la will feature 600 rooms while budget Traders Hotel will provide an extra 1,200 rooms.

Sheldon Adelson claims his vision for the Cotai Strip came to him in a dream. He’s now trademarking it. He copened the first foreign-owned casino in Macau in 2004 after the gaming industry liberalization, Sands Macao. His US $240 million investment (£120 million) was recouped in just eight months, but then he was playing the local game. To win its own bet and make Macau the new gaming and entertainment capital of the world, he would have to shift Macao’s current market dynamics – an average one-night stay gambling-only destination – into a diversified market. “It is no overstatement to say that the opening of the Venetian Macao represents a massive paradigm shift for Macao and the future of tourism development in Asia,” Adelson said on opening day. Was he right? Analysts give him 7-1 odds...

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