Old hotels in Vegas are disappearing at an alarming rate, with giant billion dollar mega hotels being built on their imploded ruins. The Stardust went in March 2007, and the New Frontier is set to be imploded in early 2008. These hotels, though large, were old, and although imploding them was expensive, the total cost of imploding them paled into significance compared with the billions of dollars being poured into the construction of the new hotels that will replace them.

However, Las Vegas is one city that doesn’t stand still, and the new hotels are changing not just the skyline, but the nature of the visitors who are set to come to the strip in future years. Just as the older hotels such as the Stardust and New Frontier fell out of favour once the huge themed mega-resorts such as the Luxor were built, the worry is that these existing mega-resorts will also go into decline once the new super-luxurious mega-hotels are completed.

This gives the existing mega-hotels something of a dilemma. You can knock down a building the size of the New Frontier because its land is far more valuable than the old decrepit building that sat on it. With the mega hotels such as the Luxor and New York New York, though, it’s not that simple. The land they sit on is valuable, but so too are the hotels themselves, and the cost of imploding them is currently too prohibitive to even contemplate such a move.

Besides, many of them are only approaching their 20th birthday, and although Las Vegas doesn’t do sentimentality, knocking them down before they reach 20 years of age seems a little over the top even for Vegas.

So what do you if you have a mega hotel that faces going into decline when faced with the relentless competition from brand new multi-billion dollar hotels that focus purely on luxury?

Well, some hotels, such as the Luxor, are going for a bold refitting exercise, stripping away much of their theme and replacing it with up-market furnishings that should see them move upmarket in an attempt to compete on an equal footing with the new players.

Other themed hotels, such as the Venetian and Paris, should be OK, as they were always relatively high-end hotels anyway, and certainly weren’t as kid-friendly as Luxor or New York New York. But what about hotels such as Excalibur, or to a lesser extent, New York New York? Excalibur is based on Camelot and already looks like Disneyland. There’s no way you can refit the place, as the Camelot theme is pervasive, and no matter how much you dress the Knights of the Round Table up, it’s never going to appear cool and sophisticated!

New York New York, too, has similar problems, as although it’s got a cool vibe going on within, it’s also got a gigantic roller coaster running through it! In an effort not to be left behind, New York New York is going for a minor refit, replacing its kids arcade (which is great, by the way, and a real shame it’s going) with a new ultra lounge. This, combined with Coyote Ugly and the party vibe it has going on inside the place, should see it through, but it’s still not what you’d call sophisticated.

At this point, I could also talk about Circus Circus, but I don’t think that’s ever been described as sophisticated, and so it should do fine within its own niche for years to come!

So it seems that Vegas might become bookended with two kid-themed hotels (Excalibur and Circus Circus) sandwiching the new grown-up Vegas that’s rising in the middle.

Neither of these hotels are in danger anytime soon, as they’re both owned by MGM Mirage, who, apart from saying that Circus Circus’s future is secure and will get itself get a major refit in a few years’ time, won’t have any money left over for the Excalibur, after spending $7.7 billion on Project City Center, and a similar amount on another project it’s planning on building next to Circus Circus.

As time moves on, though, and the next round of mass implosions begins (and I’m talking at least a decade away), expect the Excalibur to be the first to go.

Even more remarkable is the sheer scale of redevelopment that’s going on within the 3.5 miles of the Las Vegas strip. More than $30 billion is being pumped in to develop new mega hotels that make the existing ones look like sheds. If you’ve never been to Vegas before, go now to catch a glimpse of the 20th Century Vegas before the 21st Century comes rushing in.

Before you do, though, read on to understand how a small town in the desert became one of the modern wonders of the world, and see what $30 billion of new Las Vegas hotels will bring to the future of this amazing place.

Note: This article was first published in EzineArticles – but that’s OK, because I wrote it! If you’d like to include it in your site, you have my permission to reprint it in its entirety (you can skip this bit in italics!), but you must include the links at the bottom

The birth of Las Vegas

Las Vegas as we know it today can trace its roots back to 1941, when the El Rancho, the Strip’s first hotel-casino, opened its doors. The success of the El Rancho spurred the first building-boom on the Strip in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the construction of legendary casinos such as the Flamingo, Desert Inn, The Sands, The Tropicana and The Stardust, all hastily constructed to capitalize on the massive profits that gambling was bringing into the city.

Needless to say these early casinos were owned by the mob, and Vegas well and truly earned its reputation as Sin City.

The 1960s: Howard Hughes and the end of the Mob

The mob’s presence in Las Vegas declined with the arrival of Howard Hughes in 1966, who, over the following four years, bought out many of the mobsters. First the Desert Inn, then the Sands and the Frontier, plus several smaller casinos, all fell into the ownership of Hughes.

His presence in the city encouraged other legitimate businessmen to follow his lead and also invest in the city. The most prominent was billionaire Kirk Kirkorian, who built the International (now the Las Vegas Hilton) in 1968, followed by the MGM Grand in 1973.

Hughes competed furiously with Kirkorian and built the Landmark hotel, a 346 foot monstrosity that took ten years to build, never made any money, but was taller than Kirkorian’s International Hotel, which was all Hughes was after.

The 1990s: The rise of the Mega-Resorts

After the opening of the MGM Grand, though, building on the strip stalled. It wasn’t until 1986 that work began on the next major new hotel.

The Mirage, a $630 million hotel and casino built by Steve Wynn, was a huge gamble as it had to make $1 million a day just to service the debt incurred in building it. However, its opening in 1989 brought huge success, and helped usher in the next great wave of construction to the city: the rise of the Mega-Resorts.

In 1990, Circus Circus Enterprises built the 3,991 room camelot-themed Excalibur hotel at the south of the Strip for $290 million. At the time, the Excalibur was the largest hotel in the world, but this record wouldn’t last for long.

Just three years later, Kirk Kirkorian, who had sold his existing MGM Grand (which was subsequently renamed Bally’s), built another MGM Grand opposite Excalibur with over 5,000 rooms.

1993, the year of the new MGM Grand’s opening, was a watershed year for Las Vegas. The Dunes hotel was imploded, Steve Wynn’s new 2,885 room Treasure Island hotel was opened, and Circus Circus Enterprises (now called Mandalay Resort Group) opened the new 4,407 room Luxor hotel, designed as a gigantic black hollow pyramid. The era of the themed mega-resort had well and truly arrived in Las Vegas, as these hotels were followed by the Stratosphere, New York New York, Paris and The Venetian, which all opened their doors in the 1990s.

It wasn’t just themed resorts that were opening, though. Las Vegas was going upmarket, too, with more exclusive and non-themed hotels, such as Mandalay Bay and the Bellagio, also opening during this period. At $1.7 billion, Wynn’s The Bellagio was the most expensive hotel yet built in Las Vegas, and set the standard for the next construction boom that would begin in the early 2000s.

All this construction had come at a cost to old Las Vegas, though. The Sands was demolished to make way for The Venetian, the Dunes made way for The Bellagio, while the Landmark, Hughes’s ill-fated attempt to beat Kirkorian, was demolished to become a car park for the Las Vegas Convention Center. Las Vegas never did do sentimental!

Coming Soon: $30 billion of new Vegas hotels

The five years from 2000 to 2005 saw another brief hiatus in construction. This came to an end in 2005, though, with the opening of the new Wynn Las Vegas, a $2.7 billion 2,716 room luxury hotel. The Wynn was built on the site of the old Desert Inn, which Wynn had demolished in 2001, just four years after a $200 million renovation and expansion of the old hotel.

The Wynn follows in the footsteps of The Bellagio in being a luxurious high quality hotel. Its success has helped sparked the biggest boom in construction that Las Vegas has ever seen, with the last of the old hotels falling like dominoes, and new super-luxurious multi-billion dollar hotels taking their place. Las Vegas is being transformed like no other city on Earth.

In the two years since the Wynn first opened, five new mega-hotels have begun construction, each of which makes the Wynn look cheap in comparison. Between 2007 and 2010, the following mega-resorts will open:

• The Encore at Wynn, a $1.74 billion 2,054 room sister-hotel to the Wynn that will rise to 653 feet
• The Palazzo, a $1.8 billion 3,025 room hotel that will be a sister hotel to The Venetian. With over 7,000 rooms between them, the new Venetian/Palazzo complex will become the biggest hotel in the world
• Echelon Place, a $4 billion complex of hotels, casinos and condominiums, that’s currently being built on the ashes of the old Stardust (which was imploded earlier in 2007)
• Fontainebleau Las Vegas, a $3 billion hotel being built opposite Circus Circus that will soar 63 stories high
• Project City Center, a $7.7 billion complex of hotels comprising over 7,000 hotel rooms, situated between New York New York and the Monte Carlo

These hotels are currently under construction, and will open between early 2008 and 2010. They’re by no means the end of the story, though. Hotels that are about to begin construction include The Plaza, a $5 billion hotel that will be built on the site of the New Frontier, which will be imploded later in 2007; and the Crown Las Vegas, a new hotel that will be built next to the Fontainebleau, and which will soar an incredible 1,888 feet.

In addition, MGM Mirage, the company behind Project CityCenter, plan to build another mega-resort of similar scale north of Circus Circus, while Steve Wynn has plans to redevelop the golf course sitting behind The Wynn, and turn it into – yes – another multi-billion dollar hotel!

In total, more than $30 billion dollars is being pumped into Las Vegas, making this the biggest construction boom in the city’s already stellar history. If you’ve never been to Las Vegas before, go now to catch a glimpse of 20th Century Vegas before the 21st Century rushes in and transforms it forever.

GloriousLasVegas.com

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Mike Evans publishes GloriousLasVegas.com, a website with news, hotel reviews and photos on Las Vegas past, present and future.

At GloriousLasVegas.com, you can read more on new Las Vegas hotels, or check out photos of Las Vegas hotels and casinos in the Las Vegas photo gallery.

(Note: Only this article is free for you to publish – all other articles can be freely quoted, but cannot be copied verbatim. You don’t need to copy this bit in italics though!)

But other than sheer luck, just how can you do it? How can you go to Las Vegas and come away with millions in your pocket?

Well, here are 7 ways you might like to try:

1). Doorman’s Delight

Last time I was in Las Vegas, I saw some guy showing off his brand new Maserati to an excited group of doormen. Turns out the guy with the Maserati was also a doorman. He’d earned so much in tips that he was able to buy himself a shiny new $100,000 car.

When high rollers leave the casino after winning big, they’re eager to get back to their hotel and party hard. Unfortunately, their pockets are stuffed with nothing smaller than $100 bills, which they throw the doorman’s way as if it’s confetti. If you’ve just won big, it doesn’t seem like real money, so you’re happy to throw it around until the endorphins wear off! Who benefits? The doormen!

Tip: try to be a doorman at the more exclusive casinos. Mandalay Bay’s good – Circus Circus less so.

2). Taxi’s Tip

Taxi drivers take the Doorman’s Delight to the next level by stating clearly on their cab that they can’t give change for anything more than $5. Seriously, when was the last time you even had $5 in your pocket?! So if you show them a $100 bill, they’ll smile, point to the sign saying “nothing more than $5″ and pocket the whole $100.

Again, the high roller is unconcerned by this dramatic scene of uber-inflation, so keen is he to get back to his hotel and let the party begin. The taxi driver thus whisks him off to his destination, with a nice little bonus of 10 times the normal taxi fair in his pocket.

3). House!

Been to Vegas and tipped the cocktail waitress? She could be worth more than you! Legendary Australian billionaire and high roller Kerry Packer was in free-spending mode one night after winning big at the MGM Mirage. He asked the cocktail waitress if she had a mortgage. “Bring it in tomorrow and I’ll pay it off for you” he said. True to his word, her $150,000 mortgage was paid off in full the next day.

4). Do what the Dealer’s do: Deal!

When you win big, the endorphins and adrenaline kick in, and largesse takes over. Who’s the first person you see? The dealer! Good dealers at the top hotels such as the Wynn earn $100,000 a year, mostly in tips. Baccarat dealers earn the most, followed by blackjack and then craps dealers.

Sometimes, though, the dealers really hit the jackpot, just for doing their job. After losing $6 million in six hours at the Bellagaio, Kerry Packer (yes, him again!) tipped one dealer a cool $1 million.

So even when losing, some high rollers just can’t help splashing their cash!

5). The Poker God

Of course, the more traditional way to make your millions in Vegas is to wiin big at poker – but to do this, you have to be a poker god. One of the more enduring legends around the Vegas casino is Archie Karas, who in 1992 – 1993 nearly destroyed Binion’s Horseshoe cashino by firstly defeating 15 of the world’s greatest poker players, and running amok at craps.

At one point, he had possession of the Horseshoe’s entire stock of $5,000 chips. He left having won a total of $17 million after starting off with just $10,000 – which he’d borrowed from a friend!

6). Gambling Grannies

The Megabucks slots are where the real money is to be made in Vegas. Strangely, though, most of the winners are pensioners.

Elmer Sherwin, for example, won $4.6 million and followed that up with a win of $21 million 21 years later. He was 92 when he won his second jackpot.

Then there was Amy Nisimura who won $8.9 million on a Megabuck slot machine at the Freemont hotel. She was 71.

Indeed, the only deviation from this trend is the 25 year old anonymous guy who spent $100 at the Excalibur’s megabucks slot machine in March 2003, and came away with $39.7 million. Lady luck was clearly shining on him that night.

So it seems that if you want to win big in Vegas, take your Gran with you, get her to play the Megabucks slots, and she how high she can roll!

7). Casino Cash

Of course, everyone knows the only guaranteed way to make your millions in Las Vegas is to own your own casino, which is exactly what Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson did. Unfortunately, no-one told him when to stop.

Adelson’s story is one of astounding business acumen. He began by creating the computer industry’s premier trade show, Comdex, where he rented space for 15 cents a square foot and sold it on to the exhibitors for an incredible $40 a square foot! He sold this cash cow to Japan’s softbank for $862 million in 1995.

Not content with nearly $1 billion in the bank, though, Adelson decided to pour his money into Las Vegas, and came up with the idea of a mega-hotel and casino based on the canals of Venice. Thus, the Venetian was born, with incredible attention to detail that included a canal running all the way through the hotel.

In order to build the Venetian, Adelson first bought the legendary Sands hotel for $128 million, and promptly demolished it. He then lavished another $1.5 billion on the site in the construction of the Venetian, which was the first hotel in Vegas to be all suites. At the time, this decision was laughed at by the rest of the casino owners, but Adelson is the one laughing now, as the Venetian is hugely successful, and many other new hotels that are being built are also all-suites.

Still not knowing when to stop, though, Adelson has continued, and is in the process of building the Palazzo next to the Venetian. Costing nearly $2 billion, the combined Palazzo-Venetian complex will contain over 7,000 suites, and will become the largest hotel in the world.

And then there’s the other casinos that he’s built in Macau, which is fast becoming the Vegas of the East. In 2004, he built the Sands Macau casino for $265 million – and recouped the entire investment in just one year! So he kept on building, investing another $6 billion in Macau and a $3.5 billion casino in Singapore.

All this savvy casino-building has earned Adelson an astonishing $20.5 billion fortune, making him the 15th richest man on earth.

Want to know how to make a million in Vegas? Buy yourself a casino – it’s the only dead-cert in town!

[Source: Forbes, AssociatedContent, ReviewJournal, CasinoCityTimes]