MACAU - Stakes are high for new casino, hotel in Asia

Delawareonline.com, September 23, 2007

The $2.4 billion Venetian Macau Resort Hotel is an ambitious venture, remarkable both for its massive size and for its location on the once-empty Cotai Strip. The Venetian, which opened on August 28, is the biggest hotel in Asia and the second biggest building in the world. It has the world's largest gaming floor, a 15,000-seat arena, 30 upscale restaurants plus a giant food court, 350 retail shops, 3,000 all-suite rooms and 1.2 million square feet of convention space, to say nothing of its signature canals, complete with gondolas and boatmen.
And the Venetian is only the beginning of the $10 to $12 billion Cotai Strip project, which will eventually feature 14 hotels, 20,000 guest rooms, hundreds of restaurants and three million square feet of retail space, along with the card tables, slot machines, roulette wheels and other games of chance for which Macau is famous. "We are going to create a mini Las Vegas out of the Cotai Strip," said Sheldon G. Adelson, one of the world's richest businessmen with a net worth of at least US$ 15 billion and the owner and CEO of Las Vegas Sands, which owns both the Venetian and the Cotai Strip as well as the profitable Sands Macao casino in downtown Macau.

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