Take a tiny piece of China smaller than an average city, add decades of Portuguese rule, then make it the only legal place that a billion Chinese can go to gamble....
The result an explosion of mega casinos, hotels, resorts, expensive apartments and a money making freight train that is turning over more in a year than Vegas!
Macau or Macao ( whichever way you choose to spell it ) for years kept out the U.S. casino giants only allowing local operations. This all changed in 2002 and since then the likes of Sheldon Adelson have plowed billions of $$ into construction of mega casino resorts, the most notable of which to date is the Venetian. This particular casino has a couple of particularly impressive facts - its is now the worlds 3rd largest building since the new airport building in Beijing was opened and to compliment this it also has the worlds largest gaming floor. If you like facts and figures it also employs 12,000 staff and includes its own 15,000 seat stadium inside! This giant attracts thousands of visitors a day mostly from mainland china but also from neighbouring Hong Kong which can be reached by ferry in 60mins, ferries run every few minutes 24 hrs a day the demand is so high. The Venetian is part of a master plan to create a Vegas style strip called the Cotai Strip named after the scrub land area of Macau it has been built on.
As I write this the Four Seasons has just opened its doors making it the second on the "strip" although being joined to the side of the Venetian makes it more like an extension than a resort in its own right and it is certainly built to the same lavish extravagance as its neighbour. Opposite and all around are construction sites working 24/7, within a matter of months this area will in some ways mirror Vegas with maybe just one major difference. From a western perspective Vegas has a certain mystery about it, excitement and maybe even fantasy probably due to Hollywood's portrayal of gambling gangsters and card sharks. While from a financial point Macau has already proved it will out perform Vegas I don't think it will ever replace the historic adventures of the real thing.
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