The Birth of New Hotels in Las Vegas

Hotel in Las Vegas

Hotel in 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. Needless to say these early casinos were owned by the mob, and Vegas well and truly earned its reputation as Sin 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 Rise of The Mega Resorts
After the opening of the MGM Grand, though, building on the strip stalled. 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. In 1990, Circus Circus Enterprises built the 3,991 room camelot-themed Excalibur hotel at the south of the Strip for $290 million. 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.

Las Vegas was going upmarket too, with more exclusive and non-themed hotels las vegas nevada, 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.

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.

If you’ve never been to Las Vegas before, go now to catch a glimpse of 20th Century Hotel in Las Vegas before the 21st Century rushes in and transforms it forever.